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SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL
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VOLUME VIII.

1897-98.

51119

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JOURNAL

OF THE

INDEX TO VOLUME VIII.

1897-98.

A., MRS., Case contributed by ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 192

Alexander, Prof. A., Supernormal Phenomena observed during Hypnotic

Treatment 88, 99

,, ,, A Case of " Spirit " Identity 281

American Branch of the Society for Psychical Research, List of Members

1, 17, 49, 65, 81, 98, 133, 149, 165, 197, 213, 246, 261, 301, 317

Angus, Miss, Experiments in Crystal Vision 201,222,223

Annual Business Meeting 18, 198

Anonymously Contributed Cases ... ... ... ... ... ... 264, 308

Aranjo, Dona E. de, Case of 90,99

Atkinson, Surg. -Major V. M., Case contributed by ... ... ... ... 75

Automatism, Cases of 3,95

BALLKCHIN HOUSE, Note Concerning Alleged Haunting of 98,116

Barcellos, Dr. A., Supernormal Phenomena observed during Hypnotic

Treatment 88, 99

Barrett, Prof. W. F. , The Divining Rod and Unconscious Muscular Action

151, 155, 178
,, ,, A Second Report on the so-called Divining Rod ... 262

Beaumont, Lt. M., Case contributed by 76,77

Benecke, Mrs. , Case contributed by 41

Bennett, EdAvard T., The Divining Rod and Unconscious Muscular

Action ... ... ... ... ... ... 151

The "Spirit" Hypothesis 224

ii Index to Volume VIII.

Blaikie, Mrs. , Case contributed by 310

Boue, Dr. T. N. , Case contributed by 120, 1 '2 1

Boyd, Rev. A. H., Case contributed by

Bramston, Miss M. ," Faces in the Dark " ... ... ... ... ... -".'•">

Bramwell, Dr. J. Milne, on Hypnotism ... ... ... ... ... 59, HH

,, on the Work of the "S. P. R." as Investigators 62,63

Browne, E. , The " Spirit Hypothesis " and Mrs. Piper '20.")

Burton, Lady, and Miss X.'s Automatic Messages 3

Bute, The Marquis of, Note as to the Alleged Haunting of Clandmi

House 22

C., MRS., Case contributed by 121

Cases : —

" G." Cases 74, 123, 242, 277, 278, 298, 312, :;_'()

" L." Cases 10, 12, 41, 78, 120, 121, 125, 128, 130, 134, 139, 140, 141,

144, 145, 192, 193, 238, 298, 308, 309, 310, 319, 321, 328, .(_'<.!

" M. : Cl." Cases 227

"P." Cases 45,147,161,194

Castle, Mrs., Case contributed by... ... ... ... ... ... ... 298

Challacombe, Master J. P. , Case contributed by ... ... ... ... 329

Chattock, Prof. A. P. , Experiments in Thought-transference 3u-j

Christian Science, Dr. C. Lloyd Tuckey on -J47

Clinker, R. C. (and Prof. Chattock) Experiments in Thought-transference 302

Clough, H. W., "Faces in the Dark" -JTii

Coghill, C. P., Cure of Warts by Suggestion 7

Coghill, Col. Kendal, Case contributed by 298

Coincidences, Miss Alice Johnson, Paper by 207, 229

Committees — Elections on — 1897 20

„ 1898 P.m. •_'«>••

Correspondence, Miscellaneous ... 80, 147, 151, 155, 15s, 159, I7't, 171,

173, 177, 178, 181, 183, 184, 18I>, 2itt,
205, 206, 207, 222, 223, 224, 225, 281,
232, 233, 250, 255, 257, 259, 269, 270,

272, 273, 275, 295, 296
Council, Meetings of ... 1, 19, 49, 66, 82, 98, 133, 149, 165, 199, 213,

229, 24(5, 261, 302, 318

„ Elections on IS, 198

Crookes, Sir W. , Case contributed by I ! »:{

,, Presidential Address 25

Crystal Vision, Experiments in 71,170,201,202,222,223

Cure of Warts by Suggestion 7,9,40,96,220

DALLAS, HELEN, Cause of Confusion in Some " Spirit Communications" 206

Deland, Margaret, " Faces in the Dark " 269

D'Erlach, Madame Sophie, Cases Recorded by 309

Index to Volume V11I. iii

De Winter, Miss, Cure of Warts by Suggestion 9

De Wolf, Dr. O. C., Case contributed by 278280

Divining Rod and Unconscious Muscular Action 151, 155, 177, 178, 259, 262

Dolbear, Prof. A. E. , Case contributed by 123

Do veton, F. B., on Dreams 80

Dreams, Subliminal Consciousness in ... ... ... ... ... 28,29

Dutt'erin, Marchioness of, Case contributed by ... ... ... ... ... 328

" Durham Talking Clock," Exposure of 33,64

Dying, Consciousness of 250,272,273

E., Case of 94

Eddy, Mrs. M. Baker, and the Christian Science Cult 247

Editorial 117

Editorship of Proceedings and Jourmtl, Change of ... ... ... 82,97

Ermacora, Dr. G. B., — Obituary Notice ... ... ... ... ... 244

Exposure, An (of the Durham " Talking Clock ") 33, 64

Extension of Subliminal Faculty during Sleep ... ... ... ... 28

" FACES IN THE DARK" 158, 170, 171, 269, 270, 295

Farmer, Miss S. , Case contributed by 124

Fisher, Mrs. (Miss A. Buckley), Case contributed by 193

Freitas, Dona M., Evidence on " Spirit Identity " Case 291-92

Freer, Miss Goodrich, Case contributed by 202

Fryer, Rev. A. T., Cure of Warts by Suggestion .. 96

GALE, PROF. HARLOW S., Case contributed by 298

Gardiner, Rev. E. R., Curious Knockings at Long Wittenham 233

Gardiner, H. Norman, The Knockings at Long Wittenham 272

Garrison, T. B., Case contributed by 126

Gernet, Miss N. , Crystal Vision, Experiments in ... 71

,, ,, " Faces in the Dark " 170

Giddings, Miss L. E., Case contributed by ... ... ... ... ... 128

Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E.— Obituary 'Notice 260

Glardon, Augustus, Consciousness of the Dying ... ... ... ... 273

,, on Divining Rod Experiments ... ... ... ... 177

,, " Faces in the Dark " 158

Goodale, H. S., Case contributed by 161

Goodhart, C. A., Value of Complex Coincidences ... ... ... 183, 207

Gorn- Old, W., Case contributed by ... 95

Griffing, Mrs. , Case contributed by 145

Gurney, Rev. Alfred — Obituary Notice , 325

iv Index to Volume VIII.

H. R., "Faces in the Dark" 170

Hall, Jessie, The Consciousness of Dying 272

Hartley, Lieut. -Col. J.— Obituary Notice 295

Haunted Houses, Notes on Alleged 22.9s. lit.

Hebert, P. Z., M.D., Criticism of Cases 159, 171, 173, 186, 208

Hildyard, F. W., Case contributed by 238

Hodgson, Dr. R., Editorial ... 117

,, Trance Phenomena through Mrs. Piper ... 1~>I>, 166,220

,, Mr. Lane-Fox nermut Spirit Identity 232

Holbrook, Dr. M. L., Case contributed by 134,242

Button, R. H., Obituary Notice 132

Hypnotic Committee... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 32

Hypnotism (Miscellaneous) 32, 37-40, 52-58, 59, 66-69, 83, 86, 88-95, 99-1 l(i, 22ii

,, Dr. J. M. Bramwell on 59, st;

,, Clairvoyance, and Telepathic Clairvoyance ... 95, 99, 102. -Jsl

,, Curative Effects of 59. S5-S7

Use of in Education 37,83,85

,, Premonitions 104-109

,, and Will Power of the Subject 40

Hyslop, Prof. J. H., The Consciousness of Dying ... 250

Hysteria and Genius, F. W. H. Myers on 50,69

,, and Hypnosis, Dr. Morton Prince on . ... 66

INSTRUMENTS, Report on, Alleged to Indicate "Cerebral Force" and

" Psychic Action," &c 249

J. MRS., Case contributed by 161

Jennings, Miss, Hypnotic Experiments with 226

Jewell, W. R., Case contributed by 120

Jobson, J., Case contributed by ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 312

Johnson, Miss Alice, on Coincidences ... . .. ... ... 207,229

,, ,, Criticism of Cases... ... ... ... ... ... 171

Jones, Sir L. J., Bart. , Case contributed by ... ... ... 309

Journal of tke Society far Psychical 7iV.vw /•/•//, Change of Editors 82, 97, 117

Klado, Miss M., Crystal Vision Experiments ... ... ... ... ...71-73

Knight, Mrs. Henrietta, Case contributed by ... ... .. ... ... 130

Knockings at Long Wittenham 233,272

Index to Volume VIII. v

L. J., Report on Case of Durham " Talking Clock" 33, 64

Lament, J., Case contributed hy ... 312

Lane- Fox, St. George, Report on Alleged " Psychical " Instruments ... 249
The " Spirit Hypothesis " and Mrs. Piper ...184, 203,

205, 224, 225, 231, 232, 255, 275

,, ,, Spiritualism and Spirit Identity 255

Lane, Frederick, Case contributed by 194

Lang, Andrew, " Crystal Visions " Paper by ... ... . .. ... ... 201

,, Crystal Gazing 222

Library ," Edmund Gurney Memorial "... ... ... ... ... 179,331

,, Edmund Gurney Library Fund 31, 211

Lincoln, Mrs. , Case contributed by ... ... ... ... ... ... 10

Lodge, Prof. Oliver, Psychical Heredity 264

Long Wittenhani, Curious Knockings at ... .. ... ... 233, 272

Luke, Miss, Cases contributed by ... ... ... ... ... 139-147

Library, Supplementary Catalogue : —

Edmund Gurney Library 179,331

General Library ... 180, 332

M., DONNA G. DE, Case of 100

Mason, Miss M. H., Cure of Warts by Suggestion 226

Mason, Dr. Osgood, Case contributed by ... 139

,, ,, on Hypnotism and Education ... ... ... ... 37

Massey, C. C., "Spirit" Hypothesis and Mrs. Piper 257,276

,, Spiritualism and Spirit Identity ... ... ... .. 296

McLachlan, D. B., Spiritualism and Spirit Identity 273

Meetings of the Society, Annual Business 18, 198

,, General .. 3, 20, 50, 66, 82, 95, 150, 166, 201,

214, 229, 247, 262, 318
Members, Associates, and Hon. and Corresponding Members, List of

1, 17, 49, 65, 81, 97, 133, 149, 165, 197, 213, 245, 261, 301, 317
,, ,, American Branch 1, 17, 49, 65, 81, 98, 133, 149,

165, 197, 213, 246, 261, 301, 317
Miller, Dr. Nancy, Case contributed by . . ... ... ... ... ... 242

Morse, Mrs. Cora A. , Case contributed by 12

Morse, J. F. , Case contributed by ... ... ... ... ... ... 135

Myers, F. W. H., Discussion of Recent Cases 318

,, ,, Hysteria and Genius .. 50,69

,, ,, The Moral and Intellectual Limits of Suggestion 83

,, ,, Review of "Guesses at the Riddle of Existence,"

by Dr. Goldwin Smith ... 163

,, ,, Trance Phenomena of Mrs. Piper 219

NEVILLE, H. CLAY, Case contributed by 125

Nisbet, E. T., Report on Durham "Talking Clock" 33

Norton, Capt. Cecil, Case contributed by 75

vi Index to Volume VIII.

O.
OBITUARY NOTICES :—

Dr. G. B. Ermacora -44

Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone

Rev. Alfred Gurney :{2.~>

Lieut.-Col. J. Hartley

R. H. Button 132

Dr. C. A. Lockhart Robertson .. *7

R. Pearsall Smith

O'Donnell, Mrs. , Case contributed by 326

PALLISER, A. , The Cure of Warts by Suggestion ... 40

Palmer, M. L., Case contributed by

Piper, Mrs., Trance Phenomena of 150, 151, 166, 184, 205, 206, 214-221,

224, 225, 231, 2:W
Petrovo-Solovovo, M., Mr. Podmore and the " Physical Phenomena of

Spiritualism" 181

Podmore, Frank, Case contributed by 194

,, M. Petrovo-Solovovo on Mr. Podmore and the

" Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism " 181

,, On the Trance Phenomena through Mrs. Piper -JN

,, A Predecessor of Mrs. Piper ... ... ... ... 31K

Presidential Address 25

Prince, Dr. Morton, A Contribution to the Study of Hysteria and Hypnosis 66

Psychical Heredity 264

R. H., "Faces in the Dark" 171

Review, "( luesses at the Riddle of Existence' ... ... ... ... 163

Robertson, Dr. C. A. Lockhart, Case contributed by 45

,, „ Obituary Notice 87

SANGER, C. P., Experiment* in Thought-Transference .. 233

Schiller, F. C. S., The Validity of the "Spirit" Hypothesis -Ju:<

,, Mr. Lane Fox versus Spirit Identity .. ... ... 231

,, Spiritualism and Spirit Identity ... .. ... ... 275

Seeley, Lady, Case contributed by '2."

Sidgwick, Prof. H., Resignation of Editorship of Journal ... ... 82, 97

,, on the Trance Phenomena of Mrs. Piper ... ... 219

Silva, E., Evidence in a Case of Alleged "Spirit Identity"... ... 287-290

Smith, G. M. , Extension of Subliminal Eaculty during Sleep ... ... 28

Smith, Goldwin, D.C.L., " Guesses at the Riddle of Existence," by —

Review 163

Smith, J. G., Report of Experiments in Thought-Transference made by

the Hypnotic Committee ... ... .« 22U

Index to Volume VIII. vii

Smith, J. G., Recent French Experiments 248

Smith, R. Pearsall, Obituary Notice ... ... ... ... ... ... 259

Society for Psychical Research, Income and Expenditure, 1896 ... ... 30

1897 210

" Spirit Identity " and the Trance Phenomena of Mrs. Piper, Correspon-
dence Concerning 184, 203, 205, 206, 214, 220,

'221, 224, 225, 231, 232, 255, 257, 273, 275, 276, 296

,, A Case of 281

Stapley, R., Case contributed by ... ... ... ... .. ... ... 147

Stone, Mrs. C. H., "Faces in the Dark" 269

Suggestion, Cure of Warts by 7,40,96,226

,, and Health, Dr. C. Lloyd Tuckey on 247

,, Moral and Intellectual Limits of, F. W. H. Myers on 83

Subliminal Faculty during Sleep, Extension of ... ... ... ... 28

T. , Miss S. , Experiments in Crystal Vision 73

Thought-Transference, Experiments in ... ... .. ... ... ... 302

,, Reproduction of Drawings, &c 305-307

Tuckey, C. Lloyd, M.D., Hypnotic Experiments 85, 86

,, ,, on Suggestion and Health (Christian Science) 247

VENTER, MKS., Case contributed by 129

Vidigal, Dr. O. , Case recorded by 281

W., MRS., Case contributed by 45

Wallace, A., M.D., Report on Alleged "Psychical" Instruments 249

Ward, Hon. Kathleen, Cases contributed by 78

Warts, Cure of, by Suggestion 7,40,96,226

Wedmore, E. B. , Thought-Transference Experiments with ,. 302

Westcott, Dr. W. Wynn, Case contributed by 310

Westlake, E. , The Divining Rod . 259

Wilkie, J. E., Case contributed by 278

Wilson, D. H., Case contributed by 227

Witmer, Dr. Lightner, on Hypnotism and Education 37

X., Miss, A Passing Note on a " Haunted House'' ... ... ... ... 21

,, Some Recent Experiences apparently Supernormal ... ... 3

Z. , Miss, Case contributed by „ ... 121-122

No. CXXXV.— VOL. VIII. JANUARY, 1897.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Associates 1

Meeting of the Council 1

General Meeting 3

A Case of the Cure of Warts by Suggestion 7

Cases 10

Notice 16

NEW ASSOCIATES.

Names of Honorary Associates are prefixed by an Asterisk.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

DARTNELL, GEORGE E., Abbottsfield, Stratford-road, Salisbury.

GREVILLE, Miss C. C., 9, Queen's Gate-place, London, S.W.

HAILEY, ALFRED J., 26, Bruce-road, Willesden, N.W.

HARDCASTLE, EDWARD, 29, Mannheim-road, Bradford.

MAYO, ERNEST S. G., 5, Castle-arcade, Cardiff.

*PORTER, Miss, 16, Russell-square, London, W.C.

TAIT, MRS. W. J., 131, Ashley-gardens, Victoria-street, London, S.W.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

CLEMENT, Miss CAROLINE, Rutland, Vermont.

DEWING, O. M., M.D., State Hospital, King's Park, Long Island, N.Y.
HOWL AND, Miss B. M., Carver and Museum streets, Cambridge, Mass.
*NEWBOLD, WM. ROMAINE, Ph.D., Univ. of Penna., Philadelphia, Pa.
WHITING, Miss LILIAN, The Brunswick, Back Bay, Boston, Mass.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held on December 4th, at the
Westminster Town Hall. Dr. A. Wallace presided at the commence-
ment, and the chair was taken by the President on his arrival. There
were also present : Professor Sidgwick, Sir Augustus K. Stephenson,
Col. J. Hartley, Dr. G. F. Rogers, and Messrs. F. W. H. Myers,
F. Podmore, and H. Arthur Smith.

2 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1897.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and signed as correct.

In recognition of his services to the Society, Dr. Wm. Romaine
Newbold, of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A.,
was elected an Honorary Associate for the ensuing year.

In recognition also of the valuable work she had done for the
Society, Miss Porter was elected an Honorary Associate for the
ensuing year.

Six new Associates were elected, and the election of four new
Associates of the American Branch was recorded. Their names and
addresses are given above.

The Council recorded with regret the death of Mrs. Mahlon Sands,
for many years a member of the Society.

At her request the name of Mrs. Janet E. Buutz Rees, of the
American Branch, was transferred from the list of Honorary to that
of Ordinary Associates.

The Rev. John W. Quinby, of East Bridgwater, Mass., U.S.A., has
signified his wish to become a Life Member of the Society, and has
qualified accordingly.

At the request of Mr. John George Smith, his name is transferred
from the list of Associates to that of Members, from the commencement
of the ensuing year.

The resignation of twelve Associates, who from various causes
desired to terminate their connection with the Society at the end of
the year, was accepted. It was agreed to strike off the list the names
of sixteen Associates, who had either removed, or been lost sight of,
or who had become only nominal members.

Arrangements were made for the Annual Meeting of Members, to
be held at the Westminster Town Hall, on Friday, January 29th, at

3 p.m. The names of the retiring Members of Council were read
over, and the Assistant Secretary was directed to send out all
necessary notices.

It was agreed that, subsequently to the Meeting on January 29th,
General Meetings should be held on March 12th, at 8.30 p.m., on
April 23rd, at 4 p.m., and on May 28th, at 8.30 p.m.

On the proposition of Dr. A. Wallace, seconded by Mr. H. Arthur
Smith, it was resolved that a sum of £100 per annum be paid to the
Editor of the Society's publications, from the 1st of January, 1897,
payable quarterly.

Various other matters having been disposed of, it was agreed that
the next meeting of the Council should be on Friday, January 29th,
at the Westminster Town Hall, at the close of the Annual Business
Meeting of Members on that day.

JAN., 1897.] General Meeting.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 83rd General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on. Friday, December 4th, at 4 p.m.; the President,
.Mu. W. CROOKES, in the chair.

"Miss X." read a paper on "Some Recent Experiences apparently
Supernormal." She opened her address by explaining the delay which
had occurred in presenting this case to the public. By Lady Burton's
special directions, a part of it had been published in Borderland
immediately after her death, but as her relatives objected to the
further publicity of its presentation to the Society for Psychical
Research she had, as a matter of courtesy, acceded to their wishes,
and had delayed the matter for eight months. The critical and
systematic methods of the S.P.R. were not wholly congenial to Lady
Burton, and the accounts of the phenomena which had been prepared
at her dictation had not been originally intended for the Proceedings,
though, at the special request of "Miss X." and Mr. M. D., she had
consented to their adaptation for this purpose.

By their "adaptation " "Miss X." meant their restoration to their
original form, the ipsissima verba of the original messages, which
happily remained in " Miss X.'s " possession. While the MSS. had been
in Lady Burton's care, she had dictated a careful transcription of such
parts of their contents as she considered suitable for publication, omit-
ting a great deal of matter of a wholly personal and private character
which would of course remain unpublished. She had also supplied
many words and phrases which rendered the messages more coherent,
and which she alleges, in various letters, were dictated to her by the
spirit of her deceased husband. However, such interpolations "Miss
X." considered, were, from the point of view of evidence, undesirable,
and she had therefore very carefully restored the original reading,
though it was undoubtedly often disconnected and difficult to
follow.

"Miss X." was anxious to state as emphatically as possible that in
presenting Lady Burton's evidence she in no sense committed herself
to Lady Burton's point of view, which was obviously that of a con-
vinced Spiritualist. "Miss X." considered that the phenomena she was
about to describe were, to a considerable extent, perfectly explicable
on normal lines, given the hypotheses of thought-transference and sub-
conscious memory and observation. Accidental coincidence, possibly,
might explain certain details, and in regard to the small residuum she
herself was perfectly willing to remain agnostic. Only very stupid
people talk in these days about the " impossible," and she did not feel

4 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1897.

the hypothesis of spirit return by any means impossible, having a very
strong faith in what our fathers would call "special Providences" and
in the Life of the world to come. In this particular instance she
considered it, however, unnecessary. We had waited long for such
alternative explanations as we now possessed, and as but a few years
ago such a story as she had now to tell would have been inevitably
classed as " spiritualistic " in every detail, she felt encouraged to
believe that the time was not far hence when we should be able more
exactly to classify even those incidents which perplexed us now, and
perhaps to demonstrate and command their production. In what
direction such classification might lie, was, she felt, unimportant
except to those who had a theory at stake ; — having no such theory,
spiritual or material, she herself was content to wait, and meanwhile
to say boldly " I don't know."

For the sake of brevity, she would, throughout her paper, preserve
the form of personal statement which the messages had originally
assumed. They purported to proceed from Sir Richard Burton
himself, and for the sake of convenience she would use such phrases
as " Sir Richard said " and the like, but she begged her audience to
bear in mind that she did so for convenience only, and without in any
degree committing herself to any theory as to their origin and source,
— without, for one moment, admitting any necessity to suppose that
the late Sir Richard Burton was in the very least concerned in the
matter. Her audience were well aware that sub conscious information
was very frequently externalised in picturesque or dramatic forms, as,
for example, in pictures in the crystal, in which an active visualiser
could often perceive not mere pictures only, but scenes full of action ;
or occasionally writing, which though proceeding from the mind of the
Seer would be, as it were, put into the mouth of some second person
or even in the form of dialogues and conversations.

" Miss X." pointed out that the time at her disposal would not
admit of any discussion of the details of the experiences. She believed
that her own part in the story was, using the word in its broad, not its
spiritualistic sense, that of a Medium, that is to say, that the informa-
tion, coming probably from various sources, was by her formulated
and externalised only, that she originated nothing and even that
nothing was self -suggested. The subject, as a whole, was one in which
her own consciousness seemed unlikely to concern itself. Sir Richard
Burton c!> > had never seen in her life, she had never read one of his

book?/*1 >, Kad no desire for his acquaintance, living or dead. She
was ^ne te enough to be interested in a very great variety of
subject^* out was always bored by geography in general and African

JAN., 1897.] General Meeting.

travel in particular. Her acquaintance with Lady Burton was of the
very slightest, — she had found her a charming and attractive woman,
but they had little of common interest, especially in their point of
view as to psychic phenomena.

Moreover, the special form in which the greater part of these
messages had been externalised had been one not especially congenial
to " Miss X." She had seen so much folly perpetrated in the name of
automatic writing that she had always felt that planchettes and Ouija
Boards lent themselves specially to self-deception ; that such a very
little automatism went such a very long way that the productions of
automatic writers were often at best much on a level, as regards the
relation of the parts of one's consciousness, with the nonsense dreams
suggested and aided by some subjective perception.

Further, in the first sitting, in her opinion the most interesting,
in so far as it was the most spontaneous, two of the three persons
present were personal friends of the Burtons and had special cause for
interest in African affairs. In the second day's sitting in which a
fourth person. Major Anstruther Thomson, had been added to the
party, the results, undoubtedly interesting as thought-transference,
were all within the knowledge of some one present, and the later
sittings with Lady Burton herself were evidentially of much less value,
as her presence may have suggested the answers to questions she
herself asked, and they lacked the spontaneity to which "Miss X."
attached so much consequence. Speaking for herself, she had little
confidence in induced phenomena including stances and experiments
of any kind.

" Miss X." proceeded to relate in outline the experiences under
consideration. An idle experiment with a Ouija Board led to a long
series of messages partly by means of the board with the assistance of
her friend Mr. M. D., and partly by means of " automatic " writing
by herself, always with the precaution of keeping the paper at arm's
length, and beyond her range of vision.

These " messages " (using the word in the sense familiar to the
S.P.R.) purported to come from Sir Richard Burton, their object
being to direct his widow how to make the best of the eight months
of life, which, he averred, were all that remained to her, so as to carry
on as far as possible some work she had in hand, and which concerned
the fame and reputation of her husband.

In consequence of the expressed scepticism of " Miss X." and
apparently to induce her continued interest, " Sir Richard " submitted
to a series of test questions, giving names of persons and places, with
some personal descriptions, and sketches of character, of former

6 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1897.

friends entirely unknown to her. Moreover, " he " volunteered as
test information, the account of the loss of a brooch, which was
correctly described, together with some detailed statements as to its
history.

After some consultation it was decided that, as most of the
statements could be verified only by some one having intimate know-
ledge of Lady Burton's affairs, she herself should be consulted in
the matter, withholding only that part of the message which foretold
her own death. By an unfortunate accident, however, the prediction
transpired, a fact evidentially to be regretted, as it is impossible to
exclude the possibility of self-suggestion in its accurate fulfilment.

Lady Burton expressed the most vivid interest in the phenomena,
testified in detail to the accuracy of all the statements, was convinced
of the personal identity of Sir Richard Burton as alleged in the
messages, and earnestly begged " Miss X." and Mr. M. D. to pay her a
visit at Mortlake, suggesting that sittings should be held in Sir
Richard Burton's mausoleum where, she alleged, she constantly
conversed with him and where, she believed, it would be possible to
receive answers to various questions which the messages had
suggested.

"Miss X." and Mr. M. D., without at all committing themselves to
the views of their hostess, were nevertheless willing to carry out this
experiment, and the results were very curious and interesting, though
susceptible in great degree of explanation by " suggestion " in addition
to thought-transference.

To Lady Burton's strongly expressed regret, Mr. M. D. and " Miss
X." left the neighbourhood almost immediately, the one for Yorkshire,
the other for Scotland, but later in the autumn another sitting was
held for the express purpose of proposing a series of questions which
she had prepared, — again with very interesting results, which will be
given in detail in " MissX.'s" forthcoming account in the Proceedings.

Lady Burton testified that, in her opinion, in addition to various
general statements which she considered highly characteristic of her
late husband, there were made, in the first three sittings, twenty-four
assertions as to matters absolutely unknown to "Miss X.," and almost
all unknown to Mr. M. D. Major Anstruther Thomson testifies to the
accuracy of the answers to all his test questions. On each occasion
careful notes were taken and afterwards transcribed and signed as
correct by all present. The original notes were largely annotated
by Lady Burton, and as has been already stated, a special copy com-
piled from these was prepared by her for publication. There are
also over a score of letters from her, critical and corroborative.

JAN., 1897.] Cure of Warts by Suggestion. 7

It is worth especial mention, in view of the theory that self-
suggestion may have aided in bringing about the exact fulfilment of
the prophecy of Lady Burton's death, that "Miss X." received a letter
from her just before her return to London, expressing the hope of
frequent intercourse, and that Mr. M. D. had an appointment with
her for the very day on which she passed away.

" Miss X." concluded by saying, " I have called these experiences
'super-normal.' In the super-natural I have no belief. It seems
to me that it is in the nature of a thing we may look for its
limitations. But things act often in some fashion that is unfamiliar
to us, in consequence perhaps of the exertion of undeveloped powers
or of new combinations of powers already known to us — hence the
possibilities of the supernormal lie in wait for us on every side. The
manner and the reason of such exertion we shall know when the right
time comes. Knowledge is the reward of labour, and our waiting
task is that of careful observation, careful record, and I think above
all, suspended judgment and an open mind."

THE CHAIRMAN remarked at the close of " Miss X.'s " address that
he had never heard a clearer or more scientifically thought out paper
on such a subject. He had himself been well acquainted with Sir
Richard and Lady Burton, and the communications seemed to him in
some respects — though not in all — characteristic.

A CASE OF THE CURE OF WARTS
BY SUGGESTION.

The following case of the cure of warts by "charming" has recently
reached us.

Mr. Claude P. Coghill, of Frank ville, Athboy, Co. Meath,
writes : —

November 23rd, 1896.

In reply to your letter of the 7th inst. , requesting a full statement as to
the cure effected on the warts of my youngest daughter, I have pleasure in
giving the following statement : —

My little girl was five years old in October last. The warts first appeared
before she was a year old, and have been steadily increasing on hands and
face. For over two years I have been trying various remedies, such as all
the usual wart cures advertised and obtainable at chemists', as well as those
recommended by friends, but without the slightest effect. In fact I became
so uneasy, seeing them increase both in number and size, that I decided to
ask our doctor's advice. He advised nitric acid to be applied, but in the

8 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1897.

course of conversation mentioned that a peasant in the locality had the
reputation of being able to "charm" warts; on making enquiries I found
he had completely cured several authentic cases, so decided to give him a
trial before using any more external applications.

Five visits extending over a month were sufficient to effect a perfect cure.
The method was simplicity itself ; there was no preparation beforehand, he
never knew what day or hour my little girl would visit him ; the first day he
was cleaning out a stable when we arrived, and came up to the carriage to
speak to us without knowing the object of our visit. He took the child's hand
in one of his while with the other he stroked her hand about six or seven
times. During this process he was evidently repeating some incantation to
himself, but did not mind interruptions ; I noticed that he took no particular
care to touch the warts themselves. The treatment each time only lasted a
minute or two. I did not look at the warts for about a week, and when I did
was surprised to find that some had almost disappeared, while others showed
signs of sinking. After that I observed the day after a visit a wart or two
would have disappeared, but that between this and the next visit no very
great change would take place. There were fully thirteen warts in all, and
previous to my bringing her to this peasant I had for about six weeks given
up any treatment. Now her hands are quite smooth, and not the smallest
trace left of where the warts were.

In reply to my questions, the man said he never had a failure, although
large numbers come to him, many having warts as large as the top of his
finger. He is also able to cure animals in like manner. A gentleman of my
acquaintance recently had a horse which was quite unsaleable from the size
and quantity of warts over his body, which a veterinary surgeon who saw
the horse said could only be cured by cutting. My friend was induced to
allow this peasant to try his "charm," and after one visit to the stable
the warts began to shrivel and had all disappeared in ten days. The
peasant's name and address is John Kane, Ballyboy, Athboy, Co. Meath,
Ireland.

I shall be only too happy to answer any other questions. I may add
that we were all extremely sceptical as to the result, and were very much
surprised at the cure, which was as unaccountable as it was genuine. — Yours
faithfully,

CLAUDE P. COOHILL.

P.S. — I enclose doctor's certificate that there are now no warts on my
daughter's hands. I also enclose a statement from Miss De Winter who
some time ago had her warts cured by the same man.

The Doctor's certificate is as follows : —

" Athboy, Co. Meach, November 23rd, 1896.

" I certify that the hands of Miss Ethel Maud Coghill are now
perfectly free from warts.

"J. W. GRENE, L.R.C.S.I., L.L.M.RC.P.I."

JAN., 1897.] Cure of Warts by Suggestion. 9

Mr. Coghill adds : —

" I am not very clear whether our local doctor examined the
warts or not, but it was owing to his advice that I brought my child
to the man."

The other case referred to is described as follows by Miss De
Winter : —

Rathmore, Athboy, Co. Meath, November Wth, 1896.

When I was eleven or twelve years old, I was greatly troubled with warts
on my left hand, and hearing from several of a man named John Kane,
who could cure them, I went to him, and after two or three turns the warts
all disappeared, and I've never been troubled with any since. He merely
rubbed his hand over them a few times and the warts seemed to wither away
by magic.

M. DE WINTER.

I know the above to be a correct statement, as I have seen my niece's
hands before and after.

W. R. WILKINSON.

Mr. Coghill is continuing his investigation of these cures and has
kindly promised to let us know the result.

It may be observed that the cases here recorded are not without
parallel in the annals of suggestive therapeutics. Thus, in the paper
on " Mind Cure, Faith Cure, and the Miracles of Lourdes," by Dr. A.
T. Myers and Mr. R W. H. Myers (Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. IX.,
p. 196), a case is quoted from the Revue Scientifique of February 4th,
1893, of the cure of warts in a boy of thirteen by Dr. Gibert. Dr.
Gibert, wishing to test the efficacy of suggestion in the waking state
to influence some pathological processes, impressed on the boy the
necessity of getting rid of the warts and emphasised his remarks by
washing the hands with water containing a little blue colouring
matter. A week later only two or three warts remained, and the
suggestion was then repeated in an impressive manner and the hands
washed with yellow-tinted water without any drug in it. After a few
days the last traces of the warts were gone.

A^ain, at the International Congress of Psychology held at Munich
last August, Dr. Bonjour, of Lausanne, reported that up to that time
he had cured warts in ten persons by suggestion in the waking state,
having been himself cured of a large wart by his grandmother by the
same means. He said that he had known two other women who were
able to do the same.

In a paper by the late Professor Delbceuf in the Revue de I'ffyp-
notisme for February, 1896 (p. 227), a case is described of a man

10 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1897.

who had had for several years a large wart at the root of his thumb
and had tried innumerable remedies for it, all in vain, the wart mean-
while only increasing in size. Finally, he heard of an old woman who
was reputed to be able to " charm " warts away. Although completely
incredulous, he applied to her ; she went through various incantations,
and asked for money to make a novena at some church. He returned
once more, still completely incredulous as to the result, and on the
ninth day the wart disappeared.

CASES.

L. 1085. Ae Pn Impression.

The following account was sent to Professor Barrett in August,
1895, by Mrs. Lincoln, of 91, South Circular-road, Dublin.

On the night of October 15th, 1884, I was preparing for bed at 10.30,
and suddenly a great fear overcame me, a sense of horror and fright about
the steamship the "Nevada," which was homeward bound from New York,
and in which my elder niece Emily was a passenger.

1 was so vividly impressed with some calamity to the vessel that I
earnestly prayed for the safety of the " Nevada" and all on board. I was
in a miserable frame of mind, and wrote a few lines then and there. This
was on a Wednesday night. On the following Friday, the 17th, the telegraph
boys were calling out, " Arrival of the Nevada at Queenstown ; on fire for
three days previously ; all safe." We got the paper, and I need scarcely say
we were thankful for the good news of arrival hi port. My niece and another
lady had smelt fire on the 15th and mentioned it to the steward, who (though
he knew it), to prevent panic said, " Oh, ladies are always fancying all sorts
of things ;" but it was soon made known, and as the cargo was partly sides of
bacon, men had to go down into the hold and take up all the burning things
and throw them overboard, whilst water was poured down the hold. These
proceedings kept the fire under, but the steam from the water and the
smoke was terrible ; the ladies' clothes were saturated with the steam ;
the cabin floors were hot, so much so that when the ladies to refresh
themselves changed their damp clothes, as they fell on the floor of the cabin
they dried almost immediately. My niece helped the people with hot
coffee, etc., and no one lay down during the time from the discovery of
the fire. One woman, a steerage passenger, went mad and jumped over-
board. The poor sailors who went into the hold were much burned ; two
lost their sight and are now in the Seamen's Home (or hospital) in Liver-
pool. The Captain visited my niece afterwards in Egremont, and
complimented her, as did the doctor, on her coolness and firmness,
upholding the frightened women in the cabin. She was very poorly after
this terrible experience.

JAN., 1897.] Ca868. 11

The Captain's name I subjoin. My niece visited him about a week ago. I
think he will gladly bear testimony to these facts about the fire on the
" Nevada." I also give my niece's address. I wrote to her for the accurate
date, which I was not quite sure about, and I found it corresponded with
what I had written, the 15th October, 1884.

Miss Emily Williams, c/o Henry Pooley, Esq., Fairhome, Liscard,
Cheshire.

Captain Bremner, the Training Ship "Indefatigable," the Mersey,
Liverpool.

Mrs. Lincoln's daughter-iu-law, Mrs. Lionel Lincoln, writes as

follows in August, 1895 : —

91, S. Circular-road, Dublin.

Mrs. Lincoln told me about her premonition of the "Nevada's " peril the
day after it occurred and the day before the fire was announced in Dublin.

ELIZA LINCOLN.

In reply to our inquiries Miss Emily Williams writes : —

Fairhome, Liscard, Cheshire, October 2±th [1895].

The fire on board the "Nevada" was discovered Wednesday, October
15th, and was still burning when we reached Liverpool, Saturday, October
18th, 1884. I am sorry my time is so fully occupied that I cannot write a
detailed account.

EMILY WILLIAMS.

We Avrote to Captain Bremner asking for information about the
fire on board the " Nevada," and he replied : —

Liverpool Training Ship "Indefatigable,"

New Ferry, Birkenhead, October 25th, 1895.

The date of the discovery of the fire on board the "Nevada " was October
15th, 1884, and it was not extinguished until the 18th in Liverpool.

The fire was discovered at noon and was partially extinguished the same
night, but the next day it broke out again. We were unable to master
it on the second occasion, so I battened down all hatches and injected
steam into the hold, which subdued it and enabled us to finish the
voyage. ... I always give [Miss Williams] credit for an amount of
courage not often found in ladies, and she certainly proved herself worthy
of it on that occasion.

If there is any more information you require I will [be] happy to give
it to you.

A. WELLESLEY BREMNER.

Mrs. Lincoln writes to us later : —

91, South Circular-road, Dublin, October 30th, 1895.

I enclose the lines I wrote on the night when I experienced the very
awful sensation of which you are aware. This was three days before the

12 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1897.

vessel arrived on fire in Queenstown. I have had the habit of keeping
paper and pencil on a table by my bed, and these verses came so rapidly
into my mind that there was little delay or trouble in jotting them down.
Let me direct your attention to the two allusions to fire — " The fiery cross,"
and " Lurid fore-gleams."

EMILY LINCOLN.

Enclosed was a copy of the verses, which express merely a fore-
boding of trouble, of an entirely undefined kind, coming upon the
writer. The two lines in which fire is referred to are: — "The fiery
cross of sorrow" and "These lurid fore-gleams of coming disaster," and
in these the conception of fire seems hardly more than metaphorical.
The semi-automatic motor impulse, however, bears witness to the
impressive nature of the experience.

Mrs. Lincoln informed us that the verses were written between
10 o'clock, p.m. and 1 o'clock, a.m. of the night, October 15th-16th,
1884, and that the original copy was dated October 16th.

L. 1086. Clairvoyant Visions.

The next case came to us through the American Branch.
"Mrs. Cora A. Morse sent the following account of her clairvoyant
experiences to Dr. Hodgson : —

2402, 4th Avenue, S., Minneapolis, Minn., August 9th, 1891.

While making my home in the family of Mr. [RofF], then of Council
Bluffs, la., in 1881, my psychometric powers were under daily test.
Following are two instances or more.

Mr. R. was in the habit of bringing in the mail from the P. O. and
holding the letters on my forehead before reading himself or allowing
another to read them, and without my knowledge of even the addresses on
envelopes.

On one occasion while he was holding an unopened letter to my forehead,
I said, " This tells of sickness and is from some one in Watseka. Yes, I
see now, your daughter, Mrs. A, is very ill," telling also the particulars of
her disease and adding " You will get a telegram to-morrow which will call
you to her bedside, but she will not die. We must go to work and get
ready for a hasty departure." The letter was opened and found to contain
just the news I said it did. The day following brought the telegram and
that evening bore the anxious parents to their sick daughter and she
recovered, just as I was impressed. Herself or either of her parents will
bear testimony that this is true in every particular.

On another occasion while Mr. R. was hold ing a letter to my forehead, I
burst into tears and excitedly cried, " That's mine, give it to me. Some one
is dead, for I see the words, ' Ring the bell softly, there's crape on the
door.' " He handed me the letter. I tore it open and the words I have

JAN., 1897.] Cases. 13

quoted formed the heading of the letter, which was from my mother, telling
me of the death of my brother's child.

There were present in the room at that time Mr. R. and wife, and the
wife of Mr. R.'s son ; any or all of whom will substantiate this.

On the evening of May 21st, 1881, I was seated by a window at A. B.
RofFs in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Saw two large balls of light pass the window
followed by a long crimson scarf that [it] seemed would never pass, its length
was so great. I rose from my seat and went to the dining-room where some of
the family were at tea ; told them what I saw, and stated my convictions that
it was some national calamity. The balls meant death and the long scarf
blood that would enwrap the whole nation. I then saw a stout, dark young
nv.n who handed me a paper. I then said, " We will hear of this by such a
young man as I describe." Time passed and the vision had gone from
memory, when one day in July, same year, we all sat sewing and a man
passed the window. I recognised the young man I had seen in my May
vision ; sprang to meet him and he handed me a bulletin announcing
Garfield's assassination, or rather the shooting that cost his life — the first
intimation we had had of such a thing.*

Mrs. R. afterwards said she thought I recognised a friend when I sprang
to my feet. But no, it was the stranger I saw in my vision.

Again, I saw one evening a heavy lumber waggon on a road near my
father's home in Missouri. I saw next a child and a white apron. Didn't
recognise the child, her back was to me. I then saw my father and mother ;
saw that my mother's arm was run over by the waggon, was bruised, but
not broken. Saw father trying to get the team out of a ditch ; had pain in
my arm and saw that it was mother's right arm. Told the R.'s all this, and
in a few days got word from home that my parents and my child (which I
didn't recognise) had gone from home for cherries. The teams crowded each
other into a ditch. Mother was thrown out and the back wheels of the
waggon ran over her arm, bruising it, but not breaking it. This was the
contents of the letter. Did not know till a year after that what the child and
the white apron meant in particular, when, on visiting my parents, mother
told me (as a joke upon my little girl's sympathy) that when she fell from
the waggon, her white apron was torn from her waist and the lace ripped from
it. My little one, then about seven years old, hastened to her side with the
mutilated apron and said, " Grandma, can't I have this for my doll ? " And
badly hurt as mother was, she said she lay there and laughed to think that
was the child's first thought in such an hour of danger.

In the fall of 1880, while Dr. E. W. Stevens, of the Watseka Wonder, was
at my home in Harrisonville, Mo., A. B. Roff and wife stopped en route from
Watseka to Emporia, Kansas, for a few days' visit with the Doctor and my
family. One evening during their stay, the Doctor, who was testing my powers
in many ways, laid his hand on my head and said, " I'd like to send you to
my house in Wisconsin and have you tell me what the folks are doing and all
you see." Very shortly I began to see his house and surroundings (I was

* President Garfield was shot on July 2nd, and died on September 20th 1881. — ED.

14 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1897.

perfectly conscious), then I entered the sitting-room, described the belong-
ings, all of which the Doctor said was correct. I then described the occupants
of the room ; four of whom he said were his wife, son, and two daughters ;
saw the wife mending hose, and the rest romping and having a gay time.
Saw two more ladies 1 described, but he could not recognise them. Saw a
large space on the wall that looked black, on which were many pictures of
old and young, male and female ; this he recognised as his cabinet of cured
patients. Its background was black velvet, and was fitted to the wall ;
didn't stand on legs, and so looked like the solid wall. I then saw the son,
one daughter, and one of the strange ladies take a lamp and go down in the
cellar and bring up a pan of milk which they poured into bowls, and all sat
down to bread and milk, except the mother, who worked industriously at the
mending, smiling all the while at the jests that seemed to be going the
rounds. Just then I screamed, for all screamed ; the lamp had exploded
with a terrific sound, and all was darkness. I then came away from all
connection with that and could get no more. The Doctor was somewhat
interested and excited ; sat down and wrote at once to know if anything out
of the usual run had happened at home that night ; if the family was alone
or not ; "Please write the particulars of the evening, etc." Read what he
had written to us and gave to Mr. R. to post. A few days later they all
went to Emporia. On arriving there the Doctor found a letter from his wife.
He handed the same to Mr. R. to read ; it said, " Two neighbour girls were
there on the evening named, (naming them), and that while eating, etc., the
lamp exploded and caused quite an excitement, but hurt no one," and asked
the Doctor ' ' what his impressions had been of the evening that he wrote to
enquire, etc."

This is the plain unvarnished facts, as nearly as I am capable of giving
them, and is but one of many experiments tried by various persons with
equally good results.

Mrs. Morse adds : —

The day we got the bulletin referred to in vision first, was the day
Garfield was assassinated. Was it July 2nd ? Am not sure of the date.

My parents' home was near K. C., Mo., about fifty miles south, at time
I saw the vision at C. B.

Mr. Roff sends the following corroborative statement to

Dr. Hodgson : —

Watseka, August 31st, 1891.

On my return after a brief absence, I found the enclosed papers awaiting
me. Mrs. M. forwarded them to me (enclosed in an envelope addressed
to you) for my inspection, and such corroboration as I might be able
to give.

The description of Mrs. M.'s journey (if I may so call it) to Dr. Stevens'
home in Wisconsin, and what she saw there in her clairvoyant visit is correct,
every word of it as given by her, yet she has not stated all. I remember
very distinctly that she described a tree or trees near the approach to the

JAN., 1897.] Cases. 1 ">

house and the gate, but I do not remember the description of them, but
Dr. S. recognised them by the description.

1 posted the letter after reading it carefully myself and sealing it. The
Doctor had written his wife in the letter to direct her reply to care of A. B.
Roff, Emporia, Kansas, and to reply immediately, as he would be there only
a few days. Dr. Stevens went with us (Mrs. R. and me) to Emporia the next
day after the sitting described by Mrs. M., and the second day after our
arrival at the post-office I received the letter from Mrs. Stevens and handed
it to the Doctor to open, but he said, " No, you open it and read it." I did
so, and everything was corroborated by her that was described in the enclosed
paper.

The description of vision at our house in Council Bluffs, I now call to
mind as the same substantially as given to us by Mrs. M. at the time.

Mi s. Roff is now at Council Bluffs ; she could corroborate this statement
more fully perhaps than I can.

We also (Mrs. R. and myself) can vouch for the description of the accident
to the mother, and its corroboration by letter from Harrison ville, Mo., which
was read to us and the vision described at the time it occurred.

A. B. ROFF.

Mr. RofF also sent to Dr. Hodgson the following letter from
Mrs. Stevens to himself : —

Rock Prairie, Rock Co., Wis., April 20th, 1892.

MR. ROFF, — DEAR SIR, — A letter from cousin V. S.'s with yours enclosed
came night before last, and I have looked over my husband's old letters and
find the following : —

" Harrisonville, Mo., November 10th, 1880.

"Did Paulina break a lamp chimney last eve ? Were Ezra and Ida there ?
Did she put Bert to bed before the rest went ? Did Orla have a bandage
around his head, and read too ? Did you have anything to do with your little
workbasket ? Were there four females in the house ? Please answer this
direct by first mail to Emporia, Kansas.

"E. W. S."

From a letter dated November 18th, at Emporia, Kansas, I find the
following : —

" I treated Mrs. Ellison on the night I enquired about. She went into a
trance and I sent her to our home. She saw and described you (myself),
Minta, Paulina, and Diana (a neighbour's daughter), and said there were four
females in the house, described Ezra and Ida, thought they had been there.
Saw the lamp chimney break, saw the pictures on the wall, and Dickens'
bust, the cabinet, etc. Spoke of your workbasket. Saw Orla, and said his
left eye, she thought, had a bandage over it, but was not bad. Mr. Ellison
did not believe she saw. I told him I could and would prove it. Now I
will send him the proof as I said I would.

"E. W. STEVENS."

16 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1897.

Now, Mr. Roff, I cannot remember the circumstance myself, neither
have I my own letters to him. Very likely they are destroyed with many
others I burned a year ago, but here is evidence that it transpired at that time,
or he would not have written thus to me. It seems that it was on the
9th that it occurred, and on the 10th the enquiries were sent to me, and on
the 18th he received my letter proving these things to be true, and sent an
answer and explanation to me the same day.

O. A. STEVENS.

[Mrs. Stevens kindly sent, at my request, the original letters which I
have inspected and returned. The above extracts are exact copies of the
original. The letters were in envelopes post-marked respectively Harrison-
ville, Mo., November 10th, 1880, and Emporia, Kan., November 18th, 1880.
— R. EL]

Mrs, Roff corroborates further as follows : —

Watseka, 111., June 1th, 1892.

RICHARD HODGSON, — DEAR SIR, — I have carefully read the experiences
of Mrs. Cora A. Morse, a type-written copy of which you have kindly
furnished me. I distinctly remember her vision on the evening of May
21st, 1881. at O. B., and also what seemed to be its fulfilment by the news
and the manner of its reception of Garfield's assassination.

I also read the letters of Mrs. M. received by her from Harrisonville,
corroborating the vision of Mrs. M. fully, as she had related it to us, and
as she states it [in] this paper, of the accident to her mother by being
thrown from and run over by the back wheel of the waggon, etc.

The reading of the sealed letters held to her forehead took place in my
presence just as she has stated in these papers, and both made lasting
impressions on my mind at the time, and the results were as she has
stated.

Mrs. M.'s vision or clairvoyant journey to Dr. Stevens's home ; my
recollection of it corresponds fully with that of my husband, as set forth in
his letter to you, with the one exception [that] the receipt of Mrs Stevens's
letter, etc., took place at the post-office, as I understood, and I was not
present.

The above is written by Mr. Roff as dictated by me, and I subscribe my
name after carefully reading the same and finding it correct.

ANN ROFF.

NOTICE.

"Miss X.," who is writing a book on Crystal Gazing, would be
grateful for any accounts of experiences, or to hear of any successful
crystal gazers to whom she might suggest certain experiments.

Address : " Miss X.," care of the Society for Psychical Research,
19, Buckingham-street, Adelphi, W.C.

No. CXXXVL— VOL. VIII. FEBRUARY, 1807.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Members and Associates 17

Annual General Meeting of Members of the Society 18

Meeting of the Council 19

General Meeting 20

Extensions of Subliminal Faculty during Sleep 28

Balance Sheet for the Year 1896 . . 30

The Edmund Gurney Library Fund 31

The Hypnotic Committee 32

Notice . . 32

NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

CORRESPONDING MEMBER.
DR. G. C. WITTIG, 2, Kornerstrasse, Leipzig.

NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES.

ADAIR, DESMOND, Bank of England, Plymouth.

BACLE, E., 57, Rue de Chateaudun, Paris.

CARBERY, WILLIAM E., 21, Eldon-road, Kensington, W.

Gernet, Miss Nina, Basseynaya, 33, Lodg.4, St. Petersburg.

King, Miss, 50, Gloucester-gardens, Hyde Park, W.

Miles, Miss, Woodhill, Gerrards Cross, Bucks.

SHAW, MRS. W. N., Emmanuel House, Cambridge.

SMITH, Miss BEATRICE E., Lea, Grange-over-Sands, Lancashire.

Symes, Ronald, M.A., West Down, Mulgrave-road, Sutton, Surrey.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

COFFIN, ABRAHAM B., Winchester, Mass.

DILLARD, PROF. J. H., Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.

FLETCHER, HORACE, Baronne-street, New Orleans, Louisiana.

HOPE, ROBERT, General Theological Seminary, Chelsea-sq., New York.

18 Journal of Society for Psychical Research, [FEB., 1897.

KREBS, REV. STANLEY L., Reading, Pa.

Low, CLARENCE F., Common and Carondelet-sts.,New Orleans, Louisiana.

PHILPOTT, A. J., c/o Boston Globe, Boston, Mass.

SOMERVILLE, REV. T. E., 709, West Adams-street, Chicago, 111.

SPARKHAWK, DR., Burlington, Vermont.

THAYER, Miss MARY A., Stoughton, Mass.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF MEMBERS OF
THE SOCIETY.

The Annual General Meeting of Members of the Society for
Psychical Research was held at the Westminster Town Hall on
January the 29th, the President, Mr. W. Crookes, F.R.S., in the chair.

The Notice convening the Meeting was read.

The President said that this was the first Annual General Meeting
of Members held since the incorporation of the Society in the autumn
of 1895. Four members of the Council retired by rotation at the end
of 1896, but were all willing to stand for re-election, and had allowed
themselves to be nominated. Two other members had also been nomi-
nated. Notice of these nominations had been sent round to Members
in accordance with the Articles of Association. These six nominations
being sufficient to fill up the vacancies in the elected Members of the
Council, and no other nominations having been made, the President
said that he had only to declare that the following six Members were
duly elected Members of the Council : — The Right Hon. G. W.
Balfour, M.P., Professor W.F.Barrett, The Earl of Crawford and
Balcarres, K.T., F.R.S., Dr. Walter Leaf, Professor A. Macalister,
M.D., F.R.S., and Mr. H. Arthur Smith.

In reference to the present position of the Society, the President
said that the total number of names of all classes on the list
of the Society on January 1st, 1896, was 922. The elections during
last year, 52, were exactly balanced by the resignations and deaths of
Members, 41 and 11 respectively. But, in addition to this, 16 names
had been struck off the list, of persons who had been lost sight of, or
who had become merely nominal members, thus reducing the number
of the Society to 906.

On the other hand, the President called attention to the fact that the
amount of annual subscriptions paid during the year had increased by
one guinea ; but, owing to the continued diminution in the number of
" Members " as compared with " Associates," the actual number of
paying subscribers is larger by several than in any previous year. It

FEB., 1897.] Meeting of the Council. 19

could not therefore be said that the Society had made much progress
during the year. It had just a little more than held its own. The
American Branch during last year had diminished in numbers from
441 to 420.

The President went on to say that he had before him an audited
statement of the Income and Expenditure of the Society during 1896,
which would as usual be printed in the Journal. This was accompanied
by an estimate of Assets and Liabilities at the end of 1896, and a
letter from the Auditor expressing his satisfaction at the way in which
the accounts had been kept. The estimate of assets and liabilities was
satisfactory, as showing that the position of the Society had improved
during 1896 to the extent of between £300 and £400. This had arisen
mainly from the receipt of a legacy of £ 1 00 from one of its members,
which had been invested, from the receipt of remittances from the
American Branch, and from some diminution in the expenditure on
printing. The President moved the adoption of the statement of
accounts, which on being seconded and put to the meeting, was carried
unanimously.

The President having invited remarks from members present, to
which there was no response, declared the meeting closed.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

The Council met at the close of the Annual General Meeting above
reported. The President, Mr. W. Crookes, F.R.S., occupied the chair.
There were also present, Colonel J. Hartley, Professor O. J. Lodge,
Professor H. Sidgwick, Dr. G. F. Rogers, Dr. A. Wallace, and Messrs.
F. W. H. Myers, Sydney C. Scott, and H. Arthur Smith.

Report was made that the Annual General Meeting had been held,
and that Members of Council had been elected as stated above.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed as correct.

Mr. William Crookes, F.R.S., was re-elected President of the
Society for the ensuing year.

Mr. H. Arthur Smith was elected as Hon. Treasurer, and Mr.
F. W. H. Myers as Hon. Secretary, and Mr. Arthur Miall as Auditor
for the ensuing year.

The following were co-opted as Members of Council for the ensuing
year : — Mr. Thos. Barkworth, Dr. A. W. Barrett, Dr. J. Milne
Bramwell, Mr. Registrar Hood, Dr. G. F. Rogers, Mr. Sydney C.
Scott, and Dr. A. Wallace.

20 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FED , 1897.

Committees were elected as follows, with power to add to their
number : —

Committee of Reference. — Professor W. F. Barrett, Mr. W. Crookes,
Dr. R. Hodgson, Dr. W. Leaf, Professor O. J. Lodge, Mr. F. W. H.
Myers, Lord Rayleigh, Dr. C. Lockhart Robertson, Professor H.
Sidgwick, Professor J. J. Thomson, Dr. J. Venn, and Mrs. Verrall.

Library Committee. — Dr. J. Milne Bramwell, Colonel Hartley,
Mr. F. W. H. Myers, and Dr. C. Lloyd Tuckey.

Hypnotic Committee. — Dr. A. W. Barrett, Dr. J. Milne Bramwell,
Hon. E. Feilding, Mr. St. George Lane Fox, Dr. W. Leaf, Mr. F.
Podmore, Mr. G. Albert Smith, Dr. C. Lloyd Tuckey, and Mr. E.
Westlake.

House and Finance Committee. — Mr. Sydney C. Scott, Mr. H.
Arthur Smith, and Lieut.-Colonel G. L. Le M. Taylor.

On the proposal by letter of the Hon. A. Aksakof, which was
supported by Mr. F. W. H. Myers, Dr. G. C. Wittig, of Leipzig, was
elected a Corresponding Member of the Society for the ensuing year.

Four new Members and five new Associates, whose names and
addresses are given above, were elected. The election of ten new
Associates of the American Branch was also recorded.

The Council recorded with regret the death of Mrs. E. A. Lucas,
a Member of the Society, and of the Rev. Canon H. R. Smith, Mr. R.
Morris Smith, and Mr. H. Venman, Associates of the Society.

The resignation of twenty -six Members and Associates, who for
various reasons desired to terminate their connection with the Society
at the end of 1896, was accepted.

The names of Miss Dallas, Mr. T. E. Mills, and the Rev. John
Robbins were, at their request, transferred from the list of Members
to that of Associates.

The audited statement of accounts was referred to the House and
Finance Committee, who were requested to prepare an estimate of
income and expenditure for the current year, and present it, with their
report, to the next meeting of the Council.

Several other matters having been attended to, it was agreed that
the next meeting of the Council be at the Rooms of the Society on
Friday, the 12th of March, at 4.30 p.m.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 84th General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, January 29th, at 4 p.m. ; the President,
MR. W. CROOKES, in the chair.

FED, 1897.] General Meeting. 21

"Miss X" read the following paper, entitled, "A Passing Note on
a Haunted House."

It has been thought that the Society would be interested to hear
a brief statement with regard to an enquiry made some months ago
into the alleged hauntings of Clandon House, near Guildford, in
Surrey ; although, for reasons that I shall explain, the enquiry has
not led to results at present admitting of publication in our
Proceedings.

The story of these hauntings is probably still fresh in the minds
of most, in the form in which it was discussed in the newspapers about
a year ago. It is by no means a new one. The traditions of haunting
have been well known in the neighbourhood for many years past, and
the evidence seemed, on the whole, sufficient to warrant some examina-
tion by the S.P.R. At the suggestion of the Marquis of Bute, a Vice-
President of this Society, who happened to have a personal interest in
the locality, I was invited to collect and examine all the evidence
obtainable, with the assistance of the late distinguished Q.C., Mr.
Bidder, also a personal friend of Lord Bute's. The evidence was not
far to seek. I had recently been staying in some country houses in
the neighbourhood of Clandon, and Mr. Bidder was a resident in the
same county. It was abundant and varied in kind. We ascertained
that the witnesses amounted to nearly a score. They were diverse as
to age and class — adults and children, educated persons and servants.
There had been no panic, no passing excitement, the evidence
extended over a lengthened period, and was in many cases especially
definite and clear. With Mr. Bidder's able assistance I examined some
of the witnesses in person, and we are in possession of certain signed
statements, in addition to other narratives awaiting further examination
and endorsement, and we had hoped to have a case of special interest
in this particular direction to present to the Society.

The first check was caused by the death owing to an accident, a year
ago, of Mr. Bidder. His notes of the case, however, are happily in
our possession. In. the next place, the family who had recently rented
Clandon as Lord Onslow's tenants, upon whom we were in part
dependent for help, refused entirely to give any assistance in the
matter. They are in no way opposed to the methods of this Society,
and have no personal reason for concealment of any kind ; their refusal
is entirely from motives of courtesy to Lord Onslow.

It was natural to appeal to the owner himself. The story, in an
absurdly exaggerated form, has appeared in a great number of news-
papers, English and foreign, the full name and address of Lord Onslow
as owner of Clandon having been published again and again. It

22 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1897.

seemed to us, therefore, that the interests of Lord Onslow— as owner
of a property which he desired to let — had nothing to lose by further
investigation ; and that — in view of the ridiculous stories which were
already afloat — those interests might be promoted by the application
to the case of our customary methods of systematic enquiry, precision
as to evidence, and moderation in the deduction of conclusions.
Accordingly Lord Bute undertook to communicate with him in an
indirect manner.

The answer was disappointing and rather surprising. Lord Onslow
had no belief in hauntings and was anxious for the sake of his property
to avoid publicity. His method of securing privacy was to send to the
newspapers his reply to Lord Bute's letter ; and his indifference to the
stories was manifested by the announcement that he and the adult
members of his family slept with revolvers under their pillows.

The following is Lord Bute's own statement of the result of his
attempt.

Cardiff Castle, Cardiff, August 9th, 1896.

DEAR "Miss X." — I did not keep a copy of my letter to Lady Burghclere
because it had not occurred to me that Lord Onslow would write to the
newspapers upon the subject, and still less that, in doing so, he would take
care to suppress my letter while publishing his own reply. I have, however,
a recollection of my letter quite sufficient to enable me to tell you what were
its contents.

I have not the honour of being known to Lord Onslow personally, and
consequently I did not like to take the liberty of writing to him directly.
On the advice of Mr. Myers, I wrote to Lady Burghclere, a member of the
S.P.R. with whom I have the honour of being acquainted. Lord Burghclere
is, as I understand, Lord Onslow's brother-in-law.

I told Lady Burghclere that Colonel Fredcroft had sent me a newspaper
cutting containing a very long account of the phenomena at Clandon,
written by a special reporter who had been sent to the place on behalf of the
newspaper in question. I said that I had communicated this paper to Mr.
Myers as Secretary S.P.R., and that you (whom I described), and our late
lamented friend, the eminent Q.C., Mr. Bidder, had consequently gone to
Clandon, where you had interrogated a number of the eye-witnesses, and
where you yourself had been so fortunate as to witness one of the most
striking of the phenomena.

I then asked Lady Burghclere kindly to submit two requests for Lord
Onslow's favourable consideration. The first of these was on behalf of Mr.
Myers — who has the honour of being well-known to Lady Burghclere, — and
was that Lord Onslow would sanction the publication of the real names by
the S.P.R. when giving a notice of the facts. I said that I thought that
Lord Onslow could have little objection to this, as the statements had
already been published with the real names, not only in the English Press,
but also in French and Italian journals which I had seen, but that if Lord

FEB., 1897.] General Meeting. 23

Onslow for any reason did not desire their further publication, I could
guarantee that the S.P.R. would keep them entirely concealed, and either
make use of initials or of names avowedly false, as it often does in such
cases.

The second request, namely, that Lord Onslow would permit further
investigation and sifting of evidence upon the spot, I said that I regarded as
the more important of the two. I said that no one would be sent to
Clandon to whom Lord Onslow could in any way object, or indeed whom he
had not approved, and that everything would be done in whatever way he
might consider as most convenient to himself. I said that the S.P.R. would
probably desire to send down one or more sensitives such as yourself,
but that it was also very desirable to make experiments with scientific
instruments, and that the frequent recurrence of the phenomena at Clandon
seemed to make it a case where such experiments could be arranged for
with good results.

I think, but am not quite sure, that I mentioned certain leading members
of the S.P.R. — Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Arthur Balfour, his brother Mr. Gerald
Balfour, our late eminent friend Mr. Bidder, Mr Crookes (the President of
the British Electrical Association, etc., etc.), and Professor Lodge — whose
names would inspire Lord Onslow with more confidence than 1 could hope
he would attach to my own.

On April 15th I underwent a surgical operation, from the consequences
of which I was laid up for weeks. On the day after the operation, as I lay
in bed, a letter was brought me, from the gilded initial and coronet on
which I found that Lord Onslow had been so good as to write to me
directly, which I had been too diffident to do to him. As in my then con-
dition I was unable to answer him myself, I directed the letter to be
forwarded unopened to Mr. Myers, but I had immediately the advantage of
reading its contents in the Edinbro' Evening Despatch, the London Globe and
Daily Graphic, and the Glasgow Herald. — Sincerely yours,

(Signed) BUTE.

It has seemed desirable to make this letter known to the Society ;
because Lord Onslow's letter to Lord Bute — if read (as it naturally has
been) by persons unacquainted with the previous circumstances, or with
the terms of Lord Bute's request — was calculated to suggest that Lord
Bute had shown some hastiness of belief in the matter in question.
This supposition would be erroneous, since Lord Bute's sole desire has
been that phenomena which, however caused, have become a matter of
much notoriety, should be enquired into in a manner as searching as
possible.

There is just one witness who maybe summoned before the Society
without the sanction either of Lord Onslow or of his tenants, that
•witness being myself.

I had an opportunity some little time ago of paying a visit to
Clandon Park. I do not quote the date, because I do not, under

24e Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1897.

the present circumstances, consider it necessary to identify which,
of several tenants of Clandon, was my host on the occasion in
question.

At the time of my visit I knew that the house had the reputation
of being haunted ; I knew absolutely nothing of any details, a point
I can prove when the right time comes, so far as one can ever prove
a negative.

Moreover I should like to say, with emphasis, that I do not think
I am suggestible in such matters. Many members of this Society
and others have been good enough to invite me to explore houses
alleged to be haunted, often, to their disappointment, with a wholly
negative result. In short, I do not necessarily see a phantasm
because one is talked of ; that, indeed, is apt, when one is accustomed
to careful criticism of one's own phenomena, to produce a self-sugges-
tion to the contrary.

I arrived at the house in the dusk of an autumn day. I had been
disposed to discount largely from its eerie reputation for the fact that
the late owner had shut it up for nearly forty years, but there is
nothing of the typically haunted-house character in its appearance.
It is light and airy, and except for a handsome marble hall, essentially
commonplace. It suggests draughts, and rats, and dry-rot, but not
ghosts.

We had tea cheerfully in the hall. The subject of the hauntings
was mentioned, but I begged, for evidential reasons, that it might be
dropped at once. Should any phenomena present themselves, I did
not wish to have to discount more than was necessary for expectation.
I was permitted to sit alone, in the dark, in four rooms alleged to be
haunted, but entirely without result. When I went up to dress for
dinner, my hostess left me at the door of my room, with a promise to
send the maid. I followed her out a minute later to ask her to send
an additional message as to something I wanted. Nothing else was
for the moment in my consciousness. I ran in the direction from
which we had come, but my hostess had disappeared and I turned back
towards my room. As I turned I saw a lady coming towards me,
perhaps 20 feet away. I stood for a moment waiting for her to get
nearer before deciding — I am slow-sighted — whether this really were
my hostess. No, it was evidently some one who had come to dine ; I
had heard that guests were expected. She was cloaked and hooded,
her dress of yellowish white satin gleamed where her cloak parted —
she had jewels on the low bodice. The costume was quaint, the hood
of the kind known to our great-grandmothers as a "riding-hood." I
happen to possess one of the kind, about 120 years old, and the outline

FEB., 189?.] General Meeting. 25

is quite familiar to me. She should be interesting and original, I
reflected, and moved forward. Just as we met, — when I could have
touched her, — she vanished. I discovered later that my description
of her corresponds with that of other seers who have met the same
figure before and since.

I give my experience for what it is worth. I do not offer any
opinion as to whether what I saw was the effect of thought-transference
from others, — whether it was in truth some phantasm out of the past,
or whether it was merely a subjective hallucination, strangely coin-
cident with that of other persons unknown to me, as to place and
detail. The conditions under which I received the impression tend to
support the consciousness I had at the time' of not being in a nervous
or excited state ; nor had I a preconceived idea, — or information of
any kind — as to what I was expected to see.

The PRESIDENT then, after announcing his own re-election for the
coming year, delivered the following address.

He began by saying that it was no formal or easy matter to give
an address upon a science which, though still in a purely nascent stage,
seemed to him at least as important as any other science whatever —
the embryo of something which in time may dominate the whole world
of thought. He remarked that his own deep and sustained interest in
psychical problems was connected with a quality that had been helpful
to him in physical discoveries — his " vital knowledge " of his own
ignorance. He would try to utilise this open and accessible temper of
mind by clearing away certain presuppositions, on one side or on the
other, which seemed to depend upon a hasty assumption that we know
more about the universe than as yet we really can know.

First, addressing himself to those who believed with him in the
survival of man's individuality after death, he would point out a
curious, inveterate and widespread illusion, — viz., that our earthly
bodies are a kind of norm of humanity, so that ethereal bodies, if such
there be, must correspond to them in shape and size. Now the human
body represents, indeed, the most perfect thinking and acting machine
yet evolved on this earth ; but its form and structure are entirely con-
ditioned by the actual strength of the force of terrestrial gravitation.
To illustrate this he described in vivid detail the remarkable altera-
tions that would be necessary in the bodily structure and form of
human beings if the force of gravitation were doubled ; and the
changes of an inverse nature that must attend a material decrease in
the earth's attraction. These considerations showed the inconsistency
of the popular conception of spiritual beings as utterly independent of

26 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1897.

gravitation, and yet retaining shapes and proportions conditioned by
the exact gravitating force exerted by the earth. His own view of
the constitution of spiritual beings resembled Faraday's surmise as to
the ultimate nature of material atoms ; he conceived them as centres
of will, energy, and power, in some way mutually penetrable, and
each retaining its own individuality, persistence of self, and memory.
Materiality and form, he was constrained to believe, are merely
temporary conditions of our present existence.

Turning to those who deny the possibility of the existence of an
unseen world at all, he pointed out that we are demonstrably standing
on the brink of, at any rate, one unseen world — the world of the
infinitely little, of forces whose action lies mainly outside the limit of
human perception. Imagining a homunculus of almost infinitesimal
size, he showed how, for such a being, the molecular forces
of surface tension, capillarity, and cohesion would become so con-
spicuous and dominant as to render it difficult for him to believe in
universal gravitation. Such a being's experience would lead him to
conclude that liquids at rest assumed curvilinear forms ; that they
could not be poured from one vessel to another, and unlike solids,
resisted the force of gravitation ; and that such bodies as he could
manipulate generally refused to sink in liquids. Then, similarly
imagining how Nature would present itself to a human being of
enormous size, he showed how this colossus could scarcely move without
" making everything too hot to hold " ; and therefore would naturally
ascribe to granite rocks such properties as we attribute to phosphorus.
" Is it not possible," he asked, " that our boasted knowledge of the
physical world may be similarly conditioned by accidental environ-
ment? " so that by the mere virtue of our size and weight we fall into
misinterpretations of phenomena from which we should escape were
we larger or smaller, or the globe we inhabit heavier or lighter. As a
further illustration of the same topic, he quoted from Professor James
— our late President — a description of the effect that great differences
in the amount of duration intuitively felt by living creatures, and in
the oneness of the events that may fill it, would have in changing
the aspect of Nature.

He then went on to apply this general conception, of the impossibi-
lity of predicting what agencies undivined may habitually be at work
around us, to the case of Telepathy ; — the accumulated evidence for
which is shirked and evaded by scientific men generally, as though
there were some great a priori improbability which absolved the
world of science from considering it. He could not admit any such
a priori improbability as would justify the refusal to examine our

FEB., 1897.] General Meeting. 27

evidence. Our alleged facts might be true in all kinds of ways without
contradicting any truth already known. He would suggest one line
of explanation.

The vibrations of air and ether of whose existence we have good
evidence vary in frequency up to nearly two thousand trillions per
second. If we begin with the pendulum beating seconds in air,
and keep on doubling, we get a series of steps. At the fifth step from
unity — 32 vibrations per second — we reach the region where sound
begins. The next ten steps bring us to the point where, for the average
human ear, sound ends, though to some animals a higher rate of
vibration is evidently audible. From the 16th to the 30th step, the
vibrations — now in ether — rise rapidly, and appear to our means of
observation as electrical rays. Then comes a region of 15 steps, in
which the functions of the vibrations in relation to our organisms are
unknown. Then from the 45th to between the 50th and 51st steps
—i.e., from 35,184372,088832 to 1875,000000,000000 vibrations per
second — we have heat and light. Going further, we find ourselves
in a region of vibrations of which our existing senses and means of
research give us as yet no positive knowledge ; but it is not unlikely
that the Rontgen rays will be found to lie between the 58th and 61st
steps ; and vibrations of even higher frequency may well be supposed
to exist, with important functions.

It seemed to him that in the rays of very high frequency, we
might have a possible mode of transmitting intelligence. It did not
require much stretch of scientific imagination to conceive rays of so
high a rate of frequency as to pass, unrefracted and unreflected,
through the densest obstacle ; and we might conceive the brain to
contain a centre using these rays as the vocal cords use sound vibra-
tions, and sending them out with the velocity of light, to impinge on
the receiving ganglion of another brain. He admitted it to be difficult
to explain why such vibrations should impress one brain only ; but
suggested that intense thought concentrated towards a sensitive with
whom the thinker is in close sympathy might conceivably induce a
telepathic chain along which " brain waves " might go straight to their
goal, even without loss of energy due to distance.

This speculation, he repeated, was strictly provisional : but the
time might come when it would be possible to submit it to experi-
mental tests.

He would add one further reflection, dealing with the law of the
conservation of energy. It is a pre-eminent canon of scientific belief
that no work can be effected without using up a corresponding value
in energy of another kind. But, as he showed, the most momentous

28 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1897.

effects may be produced by differences in the determination of
direction of motion which do not correspond to any difference in the
expenditure of energy ; and thus the play of the " mystic forces " of
intelligence and free will is, to an important extent, outside the law of
conservation of energy as understood by physicists. Thus an omni-
potent being might rule the course of this world by the expenditure of
infinitesimal diverting force upon ultra-microscopic modifications of the
human germ, in such a way that none of us should discover the hidden
springs of action.

In conclusion, he could see no good reason why any man of scientific
mind should shut his eyes to our work, or deliberately stand aloof from
it. In every form of research there must be a beginning : we own to
much that is tentative, much that may turn out to be erroneous. But
it is thus, and thus only, that each science in turn takes its stand.

EXTENSIONS OP SUBLIMINAL FACULTY DURING SLEEP.

In Dr. Bramwell's paper on "Personally observed Hypnotic
Phenomena " in Part XXXI. of the Proceedings, many instances are
given of the extension of ordinary faculties during hypnosis. In
connection with these, it may be of interest to quote two cases of a
more familiar type, in which some ordinary faculties appear to have
been heightened, — though to a much less remarkable degree, — in the
state of natural sleep.

The first of these may be compared with Dr. Bramwell's cases of the
appreciation of time by somnambules. In the latter the appreciation
of time was accompanied by a motor impulse, originating in the
suggestion of the hypnotiser. The subject was impelled to make a
cross with a pencil on a piece of paper and write down what time
she believed it to be. In the case now quoted (which was obtained
by Mr. Barkworth), the idea of the time is— as usual in dreams —
associated with a definite sensory impression, obviously the result of
self-suggestion, and the time is estimated probably with greater
exactitude than it would have been if the percipient had been awake.
She writes : —

October, 1893.

I am in the habit of lying down after midday dinner on Sunday till 10
minutes to 3, when I have to start for the Sunday school. At this time I
very often go to sleep and have found that I can always trust to waking
exactly at the same time. One day, being very tired, I fell into a heavier
sleep than usual, and might easily have overslept the right moment. But,
while still asleep, I saw the large white face of a clock with the hands

FEB., 1897.] Subliminal Faculty during Sleep. 29

pointing to 10 minutes to 3. I woke myself with an effort, and found the
hands of my watch exactly at that hour. The face of the clock I saw in my
sleep was not like any in the house ; there was a small American clock in
my room with a white face.

MARY L. PALMER.

The second case relates to the revival in sleep of memory of a
tune that the dreamer had vainly tried to recall when he was awake.
The spontaneous revival of memory of tunes which it is impossible
to recollect by an effort of will is of course a very common experience.
This case is unusual in that the recollection of a tune heard only once
was revived during sleep with so much intensity that it was never
forgotten again. Dr. Bramwell gives instances of the improvement of
memory through hypnosis in his paper (pp. 193-195) and many instances
of the spontaneous recovery of memory in dreams are given by Mr.
Myers in his paper on " The Subliminal Consciousness, Chapter IV.
Hypermnesic Dreams :" in the Proceedings, Vol. VIIT. p. 362. The
case was sent to us by Mr. G. M. Smith, of the Custom House, Amble,
Northumberland, an Associate of the Society, in August 1896. He
writes : —

I was in Sydney, N.S.W., from November, 1879, to February, 1880. I
went to a Presbyterian Church one forenoon in January, 1880, at Balmain.
I was greatly struck with a tune to which one of the hymns was sung during
the service. Its name was given out as " Lydia New " or "New Lydia." I
had never heard the tune before, but was under the impression that I had
seen it in an old collection of hymn tunes which was at my home in Aberdeen.
The tune seemed to me particularly good and appropriate to the words to
which it was sung, and I tried to learn it while they were singing it. I got
what seemed to me to be a fair idea of it and endeavoured to fix it in my
memory and for some time managed to do so ; but it gradually faded out until
I could recall nothing at all of it. But I still remembered its name, and
meant to look it up when I got home to Aberdeen. We left Sydney for
London in February, 1880, by which time I had completely forgotten all
about how the tune went, except that it was a C.M. or 8.6.8.6. time tune.
On the passage home I often used to try to recall it, as it still haunted me,
but I could not do so, try as I might. One night while on the passage home
(the passage lasted 116 days from February 3rd, but I cannot even approxi-
mately give the date of the night I refer to) I dreamt that I was at the same
church in Balmain, that the same hymn was sung to the same tune and that
I resolved that this time I should not forget it, for by the time it was finished
I remembered it correctly. Just as it finished, I awoke with the tune
ringing in my ears and I knew it correctly. So astonished was I that
I lay awake humming over the tune and did not go to sleep again.
I think I got up and jotted it down on something in Sol-fa ; but my

(Continued on p. 32.)

30 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1897.

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(Contirmed from p. 29. )

memory is not good and I cannot now say (knowing the tricks which
unaided memory often plays on one) whether I really did so, though I am
now distinctly under the impression that I did. But I know that T never
afterwards forgot the tune and could ever afterwards and can yet recall it.

When I got home, I found it under the same name in the collection I
referred to.

G. M. SMITH.

THE HYPNOTIC COMMITTEE.

The Hypnotic Committee of the S.P.R. has resumed its sittings
after the Christmas recess, and has resolved to push its investigations
with as much energy as possible during the present session.

During the last two years we have experimented with a large
number of subjects, chiefly young men and boys, procured by adver-
tising in the newspapers, with a view to obtaining advanced psychical
phenonema, such as telepathy and clairvoyance.

We have again demonstrated how rarely such phenomena are found,
even in profoundly hypnotised persons ; but we do not despair of finding
subjects who will enable us to offer convincing evidence of their reality;
and we appeal to our co-Members and Associates to help us in our
investigations by sending us subjects whom they believe to be endowed
with special sensitiveness.

We pay subjects who desire it their expenses, and a small fee, and
it need hardly be explained that the experiments are unobjectionable
in character and free from any danger.

The Honorary Secretary, Mr. Ernest Westlake, Vale Lodge,
Hampstead, N. W., will be pleased to receive any suggestions or
communications from Members or Associates.

CHARLES LLOYD TUCKEY, M.D.,

Cliairman of Committee.
London, January 10th, 1897.

NOTICE.

" Miss X.," who is writing a book on " Crystal-Gazing," would be
grateful for any accounts of experiences, or to hear of any successful
crystal-gazers to whom she might suggest certain experiments.
Address, "Miss X.," care of the Society for Psychical Research,
19, Buckingham-street, Adelphi, London, W.C.

No. CXXXVII.-VoL. VIII. MARCH, 1807.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAOE

An Exposure .......................... 33

The Use of Hypnotism in Education .......... . . ..... 37

The Cure of Warts by Suggestion .................. 40

Cases ............................ 41

AN EXPOSURE.

At the present stage of our Society's i
fraudulent so-called "spiritualistic" manifestations seenlftNsEflR Jt0 be
occasionally a necessary part of our work, and we therefore think it
worth while to print the following case.

In Light of January 2nd, 1897, a communication appeared, under
the title, Remarkable Experience of a Durham Miner ; A Talking
Clock, the main part of which is here reprinted.

... In the possession of this Durham miner is a disused French clock,
of the old-fashioned shape, a wood frame encasing very ordinary arrangement
of wheels, and a door of glass in the style of many years ago. Perhaps when
the clock was new it would be priced at from 6s. to 7s. 6d., and it was a
wedding present to the miner's wife. For several years past the clock has
been useless as a timekeeper. It is utterly out of order now — without
pendulum or suspending wire. It has otherwise been injured, and is kept
merely as an ornament on the chimney-piece of the miner's downstairs
room, solely out of regard for the associations of the donor's name with the
occasion of the gift. The miner's wife has been very hard of belief in
Spiritualism, almost as she is, unfortunately, of hearing. She suffers very
much on account of her inability to hear ordinary conversation, and this fact
has a close connection with the performances of the old clock. I am
informed that it is six months since the wife of this miner had her attention
drawn to the old timepiece. As she stood over the fire attending to the
cooking or other household duties, she imagined she heard the clock ticking
away, and, watching the fingers on the face, she saw that the long finger
undoubtedly moved. She knew quite well that the clock had not been
wound up, that the pendulum was off, and that the clock as a clock would
not go. She asked it questions, and, listening attentively, she received
answers, according to the common code of one for " No," two for "Doubtful,"

34 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1897.

and three for "Yes." This proved to her sceptical mind that there was
more in the subject of Spiritualism than either her husband or any other
individual had been able to advance to her satisfaction.

Being a woman of shrewd common-sense, she put the clock to a test.
She put some very practical questions to it, and received answers which, on
her husband's return to his home from his work, proved correct in every
detail.

In course of time the clock has been educated to communicate with the
husband in a very peculiar way. His duties require him to be down the
mine an hour or more in advance of the miners who have to labour in that
portion of the mine under his supervision ; and it has become quite a custom
with him to pay strict attention to the clock when he is preparing, in the
very small hours of the morning, to descend the mine for his usual round of
inspection. If the clock has anything of importance to announce, the
number of ticks is given as arranged for in the miner's code. He will then
say, " Do you want to tell me something?" Three ticks, "Yes." "Will
all be right to-day ? " According to the answer the conversation proceeds.
. . . [Here follow two instances of cases in which it is asserted —
obviously on the sole authority of the miner himself — that information given
by the clock led to the prevention of accidents in the mine.]

The clock, by ticks, spells out the name of the person controlling it. The
ticks are produced by the flat steel spring on which the pendulum wire was
formerly suspended. The works of the clock are put in motion by the
operation of this spring and the motion given to the escapement wheel.
The movement can be seen going on even when the ticks are not loud enough
to be heard clearly. The clock communicates wherever placed in the miner's
house ; talks with the baby — a child about two years old ; answers any one
in the house ; and approves of conversation going on in the ordinary way at
table, even if not specially addressed to it.

The name of the person who most often controls is that of a former
working mate of the owner of the clock. He is doing all the good he can by
the exercise of what foresight he is gifted with " beyond the veil," and his
friend in the flesh says he has never found him at fault yet ! There is no
varnish upon this narrative, no veneer, no polish ; it is a plain story and
true. To-day I have been fortunate enough to pay a visit to the cottage of
this miner, handled the clock, conversed with it, and [saw] how it communi-
cates intelligence ; and I challenge any scientist to disparage my story or
explain it away.

The miner, his wife, and their baby girl are all mediums ; and the clock
is a medium, for it goes on whoever is standing by. When friends have
been sitting at table, the clock has been ticking and the spirit friends have
been walking about the bedroom floor overhead — heard by all present.

I supply to you, Mr. Editor, the name of the owner of the clock for your
own satisfaction, and I assure you I am perfectly certain no contrivance is
possible by which this clock can be made to work as it does, except the true
contrivance I claim for it. ...

(Signed) J. L.

MAR., 1897.] An Exposure. 35

The case was investigated by Mr. E. T. Nisbet, an Honorary
Associate of the S.P.R., who has done much useful work of various
kinds for us.

He reports as follows : —

17, Latimer-street, Tynemouth, February 1st, 1897.

I have carefully investigated the above, and to my mind the story as put
forth by Mr. L. in L'ujht is utterly worthless.

On Saturday last (January 30th), I took the clock to Mr. Kuss, the
clockmaker in Collingwood-street, Newcastle, and got one of his practical
men to examine it in my presence. He found, — what I expected, — that the
spring was more than half wound ; the works are complete and in good order,
with the exception of one small pin which is slightly displaced, and this
displacement retards the working of the clock to some extent ; the whole of
the works are exceedingly dirty, and it is only when the oil in the works is
subjected to heat (as it is on the narrow mantelpiece over the miner's huge
fire), or when the clock is tilted, that the small rod moves at all. If cleaned,
of course, the small rod would tick rapidly and soon run the spring down,
being without a pendulum. It is all nonsense to say that the clock is never
wound ; the clockmaker smiled when I told him the pretensions put forward
for the clock. He says the clock is all right and would go quite well if it
was only cleaned and fitted with a pendulum.

It is an excellent instrument for the devices of the professional medium.
Yesterday while it was in my possession, I got it to answer all kinds of
questions just as I liked for my wife and children. All I required to do was
to get it near enough the fire to set it on its erratic course. When I wanted
" No," I took the first tick as "No," then asked another question, and if I
wanted " Yes," I simply waited till I got three ticks for " Yes," and so on.
When I wanted it to stop, I put it in a cooler part of the room. If, when
near the fire, it went on ticking too quickly, I explained that the spirit was
angry or merry, just as Mr. L. and the rest of them do.

But I had better tell you the story from the first. I got the enclosed
letter from Mr. L. and met him at the Liberal Club last Tuesday (January
26th). At first he was very reticent and would not tell where the clock was,
nor who was the owner. I could see the clock if I liked to come to his
house and sit at a seance ; he would have the clock brought by the owner, who
was a medium. I declined to investigate the clock under any such conditions.
The owner of the clock had been threatened with prosecution for something
in connection with his spiritualism, and had been protected by Mr. L. and a
friend. It had been agreed that people could only approach the medium
through Mr. L. or his friend, etc., etc., etc.

Then I offered to go to the miner's house with Mr. L. After a good deal
of talk he agreed to take me that night to the Felling (about three miles from
Newcastle). We went there about 6.30 to Mr. G.'s [assumed initial] but found
on arrival that G. had left about 5 to go to Mr. L. 's house. We found Mrs.
G. and her three children in the sitting room. The mother was preparing the
children for bed. I was shown the clock, an ordinary miner's alarum clock.

36 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., is<»:.

After explanations the clock was set on the table with a large swinging oil
lamp just above it, the glass door was opened and alighted candle set near it,
so that I might see any movement. The little girl of two years was put on
a chair to talk to the clock. She kept calling "Beattie," "Beattie."
Mrs. G., who was washing the two boys, also kept speaking to it now and
then. Mr. L. and the two boys also tried. After various examinations and
tiltings we got various small erratic movements, but no satisfactory answer.
Then we put it on the mantelpiece ; there the movement was more
satisfactory, and Mr. L. was quite pleased with the answers he professed to
get. I need not weary you with all the absurd queries, etc.; suffice it to say
that after various experiments with it on the table and on the mantelpiece,
it began to dawn upon me that the clock was affected by heat, for when the
lamp was put near the ceiling and the candle removed, the clock was almost
silent on the table unless we tilted it.

Having observed this and the amusing way in which L. took his answers
just as he wanted them, being content with one tick when he wanted "No,"
and waiting for three when he wanted "Yes," and giving all sorts of absurd
explanations when the ticking continued when no [questions] were asked, I
undertook to get whatever answers I wanted from the clock myself.

I should first tell you that Mi's. G. had twice asked if a friend of hers
had been able to go to the Newcastle Infirmary that day ; the first time it
answered "No," the second time "Doubtful."

I put it on the mantelpiece and asked the following questions, much to
L. 's disgust, though he turned it off with a laugh : —

" Is Mr. L.'s opinion of this clock the right one ? " Answer : " No."
"Is my opinion of this clock the right one 1 " Answer : "Yes."
" Has Mrs. G.'s friend gone to the Infirmary to-day" 1 Answer : " Yes."
On getting this last answer, I turned to Mrs. G. and shouted (as she is
very deaf), " Your friend has gone to the Infirmary ! " This had evidently
made an impression on [her], for on Saturday she told me with elation, " the
clock was quite right, my friend did go to the Iri6rmary on Tuesday." I
reminded her that the clock gave three answers, all different. But of course
that had no effect upon her.

This will give you a little idea of the kind of thing that is going on. I
have not seen the husband yet ; but I strongly suspect he is a humbug, and
winds the clock unknown to any one. The poor wife, I think, is innocent,
though very ignorant. She confided to me on Saturday that she is no
Spiritualist, though much impressed by a "slap oil the face" she once got at
a stance ! She complains of her husband being always away at week-ends
giving stances.

I called on Saturday to ask G. for the loan of the clock till Monday.

He was at for a seance. I am sorry I did not see him, for I would

have preferred to get his permission to have the clock. His wife readily
offered to lend me the clock, which convinces me she does not know her
husband's little ways. (She said the key was lost and the clock was never
wound up.) I took care that the clockmaker left the clock exactly as he
found it before examination. He put the displaced pin in position, just to

M,\ K, i»!i7.] The Use of Hypnotism in Education. 37

let me see that the clock would go better so, but I made him put it back
exactly as he found it. (He put one drop of oil at the top of the rod. ) No
doubt G. knows the value of that slight displacement, as it retards the
working of the clock. I found that while in my possession it went 55
minutes in 24 hours. On Saturday night and on Sunday night when this
room got heated with gas, the clock moved a little, even on my monocleid
away from the fire.

I sent the clock back to-night by my son. Unfortunately no one was in
Mr. G's. house ; a woman next door said Mrs. G. said the clock had to be
left there if it came.

The main point is the clock would act exactly as it does now if no
medium was near the place, and the medium in this case is 'cute enough to
utilise it for his own purposes. The evidence of the poor wife is quite
valueless ; she is very deaf and has great difficulty in hearing the ticks ;
indeed she does not hear them, I believe, she only sees the movement.

ED. T. KISBET.

On coming to these conclusions, Mr. Nisbet wrote to Mr. L. asking
for an interview with Mr. G. at a seance or otherwise, as they thought
best, with their own conditions, so that he might see what results
were obtained by G. himself. He intended to take the clockmaker
with him and, if necessary, get him to explain the mechanism and
condition of the clock to Mr. L. A few days later, however, he wrote
to us as follows : —

February 17M, 1897.

I saw Mr. L. yesterday and find that nothing more can be done about the
clock, as he is now quite disillusioned about G. and has threatened to drum
him out of the spiritualistic movement, if he does not retire voluntarily. I
had not time to get full particulars ; but it is the old story : — G. discovered
by a doctor immediately prior to a seance with a suspicious cord concealed
round his body ; lies ; and absurd attempts at vindication. Clock been
examined by another clockmaker ; same result as mine ; apparent violent
revulsion of L. . . .

ED. T. NISBET.

THE USE OF HYPNOTISM IN EDUCATION.

Two recent numbers (January 1st, and February 1st, 1897) of
the American medical journal, Pediatrics, contain a discussion on
the use of hypnotism in education, the main points of which we
recapitulate here. The discussion originated in an article on the
subject by Dr. R. Osgood Mason in the North American Review.
This was attacked by Dr. Lightner Witmer, of the University of
Pennsylvania, and Dr. Mason replies to the attack.

It does not appear from Dr. Lightner Witmer's paper that he
himself has had any practical experience of hypnotism, either as an

38 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR , 1897.

operator or even as a witness of the operations of others. It is
perhaps in consequence of this that he generalises on the subject with
a much greater freedom and confidence than we usually meet with in the
writings of expert practical hypnotists. He maintains that hypnotism
in the treatment of disorders " has been shown in a few cases to be
effective ; but the vast majority of cases demonstrate it to be either use-
less or worse. In consequence, many physicians who have tried hypnotism
in practice deny to it all therapeutic efficacy. In medicine, the life of
a panacea is generally short . . . inasmuch as its worthlessness
can so soon be demonstrated. Unfortunately, this is not the case in
education, where the connection between cause and effect is difficult to
demonstrate." The writer thinks therefore that Dr. Mason's article,
in speaking with " such unbounding (sic) confidence " of the uses of
hypnotism, is likely to mislead the public. He remarks that " Mind
cures, and faith cures, and hypnotic cures have a hold upon the layman,
because he has neither the knowledge nor the insight to determine the
well marked line of distinction between those cases in which the mind
may act in a remedial way, and those in which its influence produces no
beneficial change whatever." We may observe, however, that while it
is no doubt possible that there may be a well-marked line of distinction
between the two classes of cases here assumed to exist, a physiologist
would probably lie the last person to claim that he was acquainted
with its position.

Dr. Lightuer Witmer admits that hypnotism may now and then in
a limited class of cases be useful, but thinks that its usefulness has
been greatly exaggerated and fears that in* Dr. Mason's article many
readers may "accept for fact what is only the author's individual
opinion." In support of his own views, however, he does not quote a
single authority and only brings forward one case, — and that one in
which he merely believes that certain results will follow on a certain
treatment. The case was that of a lady under treatment for stutter-
ing; which was prevented on one occasion by hypnotic suggestion.
Dr. Lightner Witmer found also that suggestion in the waking state
was not without effect on her; and he is apparently not aware that this
is a frequent practice with many hypnotic operators, some even main-
taining that suggestion in the waking state is identical with that in
hypnotism. Believing, however, that the effect of the hypnotic
suggestion would soon wear off, he persuaded his patient to take
lessons in articulation instead. The result of these lessons is not
reported, the writer merely recording his belief that they would effect
a permanent cure.

He ends by repeating the now almost obsolete fallacy as to the

MAR.. 189?.] The Use of Hypnotism in Education. 39

close connection of hypnotism with hysteria and its tendency to develop
hysterical symptoms. He asserts — without offering a shadow of proof
for the statement — that if such disorders as insomnia are treated by
hypnotism, the amount of treatment has to be constantly increased,
and when it is stopped, the patient is worse than before. Finally,
though he admits that hypnotism, if judiciously employed, may help to
develop " psychic control," he lays great stress on the danger that the
subject may become entirely dependent on the hypnotiser.

In reply, Dr. Osgood Mason denies that hypnotism has ever been
claimed to be a panacea, or sure cure for any disease, by any one
competent to speak of it, but says that those physicians who have
made the most extensive use of it find it an efficient help in very many,
if not in the majority, of the cases to which they apply it. Like any
other therapeutic agency — e.g., drugs or surgical instruments — it
requires skilful application and may do harm if used ignorantly. But,
" if evil is done by hypnotism, it is the fault of the operator, and not
of the agent."

In contrast to Dr. Lightner Witmer's vague and general allega-
tions, Dr. Mason refers first to the report of Dr. Berillon (the editor
of the Revue de I' Hypnotisme) on the successful treatment of more
than 250 children for such disorders as nervous insomnia, night terrors,
somnambulism, kleptomania, stammering, etc. (See Dr. Berillon's paper
in the Report of the International Congress of Experimental Psychology,
London, 1892, p. 166. It apppears that several of the physicians who
took part in the discussion on Dr. Berillon's paper were familiar with
the effects described, or similar ones, in their own practice.) He states
that he has himself verified the good effect of hypnotic suggestion in
almost every class of cases mentioned by Dr. Berillon and proceeds
to quote several instances. One was that of a school girl of 15,
whose inveterate inattention, forgetfulness and incapacity for learn-
ing her lessons, led her teachers to report to her mother that it was
impossible for her to pass a certain examination. She was brought to
Dr. Mason a few weeks before it, and had six treatments. Her
lessons at once began to improve and she passed the examination
satisfactorily, and a subsequent one a few weeks later without any
renewal of the treatment. Another was a case of a striking improve-
ment in spelling, and to a certain extent grammar, in the letters of " a
generally intelligent but uneducated woman." The same woman had
been accustomed to walk all her life in her sleep — often into dangerous
situations. This was entirely cured by a single suggestion and has
not occurred again for nearly two years. In a third case, a little boy
of 7 was treated for extreme timidity and cowardice, with markedly

40 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1897.

beneficial results. Another was that of a little girl who had dreamt
every night for months of a hideous black man and used to wake
.screaming with terror. After a single treatment, the dream ceased
and has not occurred again for a year. Another case was one of
depression and suicidal mania in a young man of 19 ; this also was
cured by a single treatment, nearly a year before the date of the paper,
and has not recurred since.

Dr. Mason emphatically denies that the patient's will was in any
way weakened in these cases, or that he became dependent on the
operator. He maintains, on the contrary, that the whole tendency of
the treatment was to increase his power of self control. The same view,
though not universally held by hypnotic experts, was strongly insisted
on, as our readers will remember, in Dr. Bramwell's recent papers in
Part XXXI of the Proceedings. Dr. Mason further denies, — and this
of course, the great majority of physicians who have had experience of
hypnotism also deny, — that there is anything morbid in the suscepti-
bility to hypnotic influence, or that it is most efficacious in dealing
with hysterical subjects.

Dr. Mason is about to bring out a book on " Telepathy and the
Subliminal Self; a work treating of hypnotism, automatism, trance
and phantasms " (published by Henry Holt and Co., New York), in
which we hope that these and other results of his hypnotic studies will
appear in full.

THE CURE OF WARTS BY SUGGESTION.

Soon after we received the interesting case contributed to the
Journal of last January by Mr. C. P. Coghill(see p. 7), the following
similar instance was reported to us. Though this case is much more
remote than that described by Mr. Coghill, there seems no reason to
doubt that the main outlines of the incident are correctly remembered.

Conservative Club, St. James's Street, S.W.,

December 23rd, 1896.

My personal experience of the so-called "wart charming" is aa
follows. When a boy of about 9 years of age, my family were living at
Fulham, and my father occasionally availed himself of the services of a local
chiropodist, who also, I believe, was a clockmaker and attended to the clocks
in the house. My left hand at that time was much disfigured by a crop of
small warts, which had refused to yield to any of the usual remedies.

During one of his visits, this was noticed by the chiropodist, — whose name
I forget, (the incident is nearly 32 years ago),— and he without any hesitation
and in a very unpretentious manner offered to remove them ; and I

MAR., 1897.] Cases. 41

remember my parents, and a nurse, seemed to take it quite as a matter of
course that he was about to "charm " them (the warts), away.

My recollection of the exact procedure is vague ; but, so far as my memory
M -i-\< -s, he touched the warts lightly with his linger, counted them roughly,
tied a piece of red wool or thread round my wrist, which I think I had to
sleep with and burn next morning. I am certain no medicinal application
of any kind was made, or knife or scraper used. He told me not to think
about them, but that on his next visit, in a week or 10 days' time, they would
have disappeared.

And it undoubtedly so happened, — whether "post Jioc," or " propter hoc,"
I express no opinion.

But I can certainly testify to the very general belief in wart charming,
some 25 to 30 years ago, as being accepted as a very everyday occurrence,
and quite in the natural order of things, though perhaps savouring a little of
white magic.

ARTHUR PALLISER, JUNR.

We have received further communications from Mr. Coghill about
the operations of the man referred to in his report, which we are
hoping to print when more evidence is obtained.

CASES.

L. 1087. AA Pn Apparition.

We are indebted to the kindness of Mrs. Beiiecke for the following
account. Her son, Mr. E. F. M. Benecke, was an Exhibitioner of
Balliol College, Oxford, and, as his posthumous work on " The Position
of Women in Greek Poetry " shows, a classical scholar of the highest
promise. He was a good Alpine climber, and was collaborating in a
guide to the Swiss Alps at the time of his death. On the day on which
it occurred, he was seen in Mrs. Benecke's garden by the daughter of
her laundress.

The percipient writes to Mrs. Benecke : —

80, Mayes-road, Wood Green, February 1st, 1897.

Madam, — Mother has this morning brought your letter to Emma over to
me, as I could better write what happened on July 16th, 1895, as it was me
that saw Mr. Edward with another gentleman in the garden (as I thought).
I remember it all so well that I have been able to write it just as it

happened. — Yours respectfully,

E. NICHOLS.

[P.S.]— I have signed the other paper with my name as it was then.

On Tuesday, July 16th, 1895, between the hours of 1 and 2 o'clock, I was
doing some work in our bedroom and, looking out of the window, saw (as I

42 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1897.

thought) Mr. Edward Benecke with another young gentleman walking in the
garden, and I went at once to mother and told her Mr. Edward had come
home, and she said something must have prevented him from starting, as we
knew he was going to Switzerland for his holiday, for I was positive it was
him I saw. When nurse came in on the Thursday, mother asked her if Mr.
Edward had come home, and she said "No" and then we only said "I
thought I saw him," and we thought no more about it until the sad news
reached us.

ELLEN CARTER.

In answer to some questions from Mrs. Benecke, Mrs. Nichols
writes further : —

80, Mayes-road, Wood Green, February 4th, 1897.

Madam, — I am glad to be able to answer the questions you have asked
me. I did see another young man with Mr. Edward (as I thought it was)
and the look was not momentary, for I was so surprised to see him that I
watched him until he turned round the path ; he was coming, as he
sometimes did after luncheon, from the stable yard, along the path and
turned towards the house. He was smiling and talking to his friend, and T
particularly noticed his hair, which was wavy as it always was ; he had
nothing on his head. It was all that that made me feel so sure it was him,
and I felt that I could not have been mistaken, knowing him so well. I
cannot tell you anything [about] what the other young gentleman was like,
as he was walking the other side ; also I hardly noticed him at all, being so
surprised to see Mr. Edward. Mother was doubtful when I told her about
it and said I must be mistaken ; but I said I was sure I was not, and I was
positive I had seen him, and I felt sure he had come home until nurse came
in and said he had not been home, and then I thought how strange it was,
and even then I could not think I was so mistaken, and often have I thought
about it and feel even now that it was him I saw. Mother did say perhaps
some accident had happened to his friend that he was to travel with and so
was prevented from going ; that was the only remark that was made about
an accident.

If there is any other question I can answer, I shall be only too glad to do
it for you.

E. NICHOLS.

Mrs. Benecke gives the following particulars : —

Teddy was in the habit of walking regularly in the garden, from 10
minutes past 12 till 1 o'clock, and again directly after luncheon, varying,
according to the time this meal took us, from 1.30 or 1.45 till 2.30. He was
so regular that I could tell the time by his footfall on the stairs. He never,
except in the very coldest weather — to please me — wore a hat or cap in the
garden. The laundress often watched him walking up and down the garden
paths, noticing the wind playing with his wavy hair. She even, at times,
would get up on a stool to watch him, especially when Margaret was with
him. She says they looked so bright and happy together. She has left us
owing to her health, and her daughter married quite lately.

MAR., l«!)7.] GWs. 4.S

Teddy \vas devoted to his "dear mountains," they were a "second home"
to him ; hut all his letters prove that his thoughts were very much with us
on the climbs. He wrote to me in 1892 that when bivouacking out even
in his Bietschhorn, " it felt strange to be so far away, so high up, and as I
wrapped myself in my rug, I thought of you all, sitting round the lamp, etc."
In 1895 he wrote, after his successful crossing the Wetterliicke, (a climb
he was quite delighted with) "at 8.30,— just as you were coming down to
breakfast, I was thinking — we were through." The last climb he wrote
about to both Margaret and myself he said: "The last half -hour was not
pleasant ; it was the only time during the climb that I was not sorry you
(Margaret) were not with us." With a heart so full of thought and love of
us at home, even when intensely interested and occupied in his dearest
pursuit, it seems natural that when called to leave us once more, he should
have turned towards us and sent his loving thoughts home. That they took
his shape and were seen once more on his familiar path seems very wonderful
and of course inexplicable, but to me seems a fact. I believe that he was
taken when his form appeared here. It makes it somewhat more difficult to
conjecture where it happened, as he intended to be back by 4 and this time
— between 1 and 2 — gives therefore only 3 hours from Ried.

I wrote to our former laundress with respect to her having seen Teddy on
July 16th, 1895. Our old nurse told me that it was the younger daughter,
Emma, who had seen him. I could not, at the time Mrs. Carter left our
service, November, 1895, trust myself to speak to her about it ; therefore I
was rather uncertain as to what really had been said, and when I received
the first letter, I wrote for a few more particulars.

It was through this letter that I heard, for the first time, that Ellen
Carter saw two forms, which seems all the more remarkable to me. I therefore
w< »ndered if she could remember the face of the friend. I had understood
she had seen him "about one o'clock " and had thought it was in his morning
walk, but Ellen is positive that it was later. His coming out of the stable
yard is quite likely ; he often fetched the dog. I asked her if it was a
"momentary passing view" she had, as in the first letter she writes almost
as if she had merely looked out and then gone to her mother.

When I heard this talked about, I remembered the word "accident" and
asked her if it was mentioned. Her answer in [the second] letter refers
to this question.

In answer to our further enquiries, Mrs. Benecke wrote : —

Norfolk Lodge, Barnet, February, loth, 1897.

I will do my best to answer your questions and to do it clearly and
systematically.

Ellen Carter lived with her mother and sister in a cottage in our garden.
I have tried to give you an idea of the cottage by the enclosed sketch. I took
this sketch from our dining-room window, past which the broad path leads,
which I called A. Along this path my son went daily and often have I
watched his light swinging steps till he had gone through the little gate I
called B. This leads into our kitchen garden. I had understood that when

44 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1897.

Ellen saw him on July 16th, 1895, he was coming back from his first walk
through the gate B and had turned towards our house down the path A. You
will easily understand that during the first months, I could not ask questions
about the events of that day, — nor, in fact, can I now. But I was told of Ellen
having seen my son almost directly after my return, and Mr. Benecke heard
of it at once. I will return to this directly. Ellen was in her mother's
house tidying their bedroom (which has the window I have marked I), when,
looking up, she saw my son. She tells about that herself and that he ' ' was
coming out of the stable yard. " That would not be quite his usual direction,
because he mostly jumped out of the window after luncheon, but still it did
happen that he would fetch the dog, or put him away, in the yard. The door
leading into the yard is behind bushes and he would, according to Ellen's
account, have come from there and out where the path D comes out towards
our house. You will, I hope, understand from this about the distance from
the cottage to the path, and that it would be quite easy for Ellen, who seems
to have quite good sight, to have seen him distinctly and for a minute at
least.

Mrs. Carter cannot write, so it would only be what Ellen wrote for her
which we should get by asking for her version. Our old nurse, who can
write, is very confused about what and when she first heard of it, and there-
fore she can write down nothing. I have asked her several times about it all,
but she varies each time in her statements, except that she remembers Mrs.
Carter asking her if " Mr. Teddy had come home, " and then her saying " Oh,
I told Nellie she was mistaken, when she thought she saw him." She could
not have spoken like that if the conversation had taken place after we heard
the terrible news. Mr. Benecke remembers that the gardeners told him,
after the news, that Ellen had said she had seen Mr. Teddy, and the general
impression has certainly been that she had said so, and therefore had believed
it, that she had seen him in the garden, on that day. [She is convinced] that
it was "Mr. Teddy, no one else" she saw, for she said that she knew his pretty
wavy hair too well to make a mistake, and she quite sulked when it was
I 'i- nved to her that she was mistaken.

We heard the terrible news on Saturday morning, July 20th, and I started
five minutes later to catch the train and go over to Switzerland. Of course
the servants heard of it at once, and Nellie then is said to have been very much
startled when she heard it. There has never been any doubt in our minds
here that she had all along said she had seen him on the Tuesday.

There have been printed notices of my dear boy's loss in many papers.
We have no means of fixing the hour of it. All we know of his plans for
July 16th was that he started with Mr. Cohen at 3 a.m. from Ried, and was
seen at 3.30 a.m. at Blatten, and that he had arranged with the guides of
Ried to meet him there at 4 p.m. o'clock on the Tuesday, 16th, to settle
details for a tour on the 17th. My son was very accurate and always
planned his tours exactly before starting. The guides told me that he knew
every inch of ground in the neighbourhood. He was working for Mr.
Coolidge and there was but one ridge of rock not yet explored in the district
assigned to him. I feel certain that the two friends started for that ridge

AH., 18<J7.]

Cases.

"Feenkiindl" and that there they are now resting. This conviction has
become clear to me, hut since I have understood the whole
, the weather has made all search impossible ....

MARIE BENECKE.

Mrs. Benecke also sent us the accompanying ground plan (not
drawn to scale) lettered as in her sketch, showing the position of the
percipient in relation to the place where the apparition was seen.

Cottage

I. Window in cottage.
C. Path leading to stables.

P. 155. Impression.

The following case was sent to us by Dr. C. Lockhart Robertson,
of Gunsgreen, The Drive, Wimbledon. The account here reproduced
was privately printed in 1878, having been written — though this does
not appear in the narrative — by Mrs. W., wife of the Rev. Dr. W.
referred to. We are requested not to give the names of the witnesses.

In July, 1860, I went to reside for a short time at Trinity, near Edin-
burgh, accompanied by my little daughter A. and a servant. On Sunday,
15th of that month, the Rev. Dr. W., of Edinburgh, late in the afternoon,
walked down to see me, and, on his way, heard that a terrible railway accident
had just occurred on the line between Edinburgh and Granton ; that an engine
and tender, with five men, had run off the rail, and that three of them had
been killed on the spot. On arriving at Trinity he told me what had

46 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1897.

happened, and asked if I had heard any particulars. I replied that I had
not heard of the accident at all, not having seen any one that afternoon.
After a little further conversation on the subject, I said, "I have had a
strange nervous feeling this afternoon about A. for which I am unable
to account ; I wonder if it could have had any relation to this accident."
He asked what I meant, and I replied as follows : — "Between three and
four o'clock I told A. to go out and take a short walk, and as she was
quite alone I advised her to go into the railway garden (a name she gave to
a narrow strip of ground between the sea-wall and the railway embankment,
which was closed by a gate at either end). A few minutes after her
departure I distinctly heard a voice, as it were, within me say, ' send for her
back, or something dreadful will happen to her.' I thought it was a strange
suggestion. I reasoned with myself, what could happen to her on so lovely
a day, with hardly a ripple on the sea, all the world gone to church, and in
so quiet a walk, where she would probably meet no one but a nursemaid and
some children — so I refused to send for her. But a little afterwards the
same thing occurred again ; the same words were repeated in the same
manner as before, but, as appeared to me, with greater emphasis. Again I
resisted the thought that she could be exposed to any danger, and taxed my
imagination to divine what could happen. The only thing that suggested
itself was the possibility of her encountering a mad dog ; but this was so
very unlikely that I dismissed it entirely from my mind, and I persuaded
myself that it would be absurd to bring her back on account of such a fancy,
and, though beginning to feel uneasy, I still resolved to do nothing, and
endeavoured to throw off the oppressive feeling by occupying my mind with
other things. For a time I succeeded. But soon the voice renewed the
warning, in nearly the same words as before, ' Send for her back, or some-
thing terrible will happen to her. ' At the same moment I was seized with
a violent trembling, and a feeling of great terror took possession of me. I
rose hastily, rang the bell, and ordered the servant to go immediately and
bring Miss A. home, repeating at the same cime the words of the warning,
'or something dreadful will happen to her.' The servant, in order to
quiet my agitation, said, ' Nothing can possibly happen to her, ma'am, she
can be in no danger. The weather is very fine ; everything is so quiet ;
everybody is at church. I never saw you nervous before, and yet Miss
A. has been often out alone, and you were never anxious about her.'
* Quite true, ' I replied, ' but go directly ; there is no time to be lost ; go at
once.' On leaving the room she told Miss O., the landlady, what had
occurred, and the reason of her going out, which she thought very un-
necessary.

' ' During her absence the terror which so unaccountably possessed me
seemed to increase, and I feared that I should never see my child again
alive. In about a quarter of an hour the servant returned with her safe and
well. Disappointed at having her walk so suddenly interrupted, A. asked
if she must remain in the house the whole afternoon. I told her there
was no occasion for this, but she must give me her promise that she would
not go to the place she intended when I sent for her ; she might go

.. is«»7.] Cases. 47

unywhero else ; she might go to her uncle, Major S , and remain with hin

grandchildren in his garden. She will be safe, I thought, between the four
stone walls ; for though she had returned safe, I distinctly felt that there was
still danger in the place from which I had recalled her, whatever that danger
might be, and my object was to prevent her returning there. No sooner
1 i.id she quitted the house than all anxiety on her account passed away. I
thought no more about it, nor reflected on what might have been a foolish
panic ; it vanished from my mind like a dream, and if you had not
mentioned this terrible accident, I dare say I should never have told you
about it or thought about it myself any more."

Shortly after A. came into the room, and Dr. W. asked her where
she was going when the servant overtook her and brought her back.
She said she was going through the railway garden to sit on the great stones
by the seaside, to hear the trains pass by. "I was two hours there with my
brother last Sunday, and we heard the trains go up and down ; they made
such a noise as they passed over the arch ! " Now it was on that very spot
the engine and tender fell when they ran off the line, breaking through the
protecting wall, and crashing down on those very stones where she was
accustomed to sit, and killing three men out of the five that were on them.*
Shortly afterwards A. accompanied by her brother (aged thirteen), visited
the scene of the accident, and, making their way through a little crowd
gathered round it, they saw the shattered engine lying on the spot to which
she had been going, and where she had spent some time with him the
Sunday before.

Afterwards, on reviewing all the circumstances, I thought I could
perceive very distinctly the reason why I had been compelled to act with
such urgent haste, which did not appear on first thoughts to have been
necessary, as the accident did not occur for some time later ; for if even a
little delay had taken place, the child would have passed out of the walk and
would have gained her favourite seat by the sea, where she would have been
completely hidden from any one looking for her in the walk itself, and the
servant would have returned without her. Again, if I had not so strictly
prohibited her from returning to the same place, she certainly would have
done so (as she herself acknowledged), for it possessed much greater
attractions for her than any other, and she consequently would have been on
the stones when the train passed from Granton.

The landlady with whom the writer was staying at the time
corroborates her account as follows : —

March 26th, 1878.

MADAM, — In answer to your inquiries, I beg to say I remember your
being with me twice when I lived at Trinity — once was in July, 1860. I

* A few days after the above incident, I wrote a little account of it to a lady, and
before sending this to the press, I forwarded it to her to know if it corresponded to
my first statement. In reply, she said that the only difference there was between
the two accounts was that in the former I did not mention where A. went after
she returned from the railway garden.

48 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1897.

perfectly remember your sending your servant to bring Miss home from

her walk on Sunday, July 15th, because you were very nervous about her.
The servant did not wish to be sent out then, but went, and brought

Miss home. When I heard about the accident that happened on the

railway, I had told Miss she had had a providential escape, for she

certainly would have been killed if she had been sitting on the big stones
she had intended to ; and I advised her not to go near the railway again. —
Yours respectfully,

(Signed in full) B. H. O.
Dr. W. writes : —

April 18th, 1878.

I have been requested to authenticate the facts related in this tract.
This I willingly do, leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions from
them. How I became acquainted with the circumstances appears in the
tract itself ; and my recollection of that Sunday afternoon is so clear and
fresh that I am able, without hesitation, to certify the perfect correctness of
the narrative.

Dr. C. L. Robertson adds : —

Wimbledon, January, 1896.

The Rev. Dr. W. was a cousin of mine, and a man of great judgment
and good sense, and his word in every way to be relied on.

Dr. C. L. Robertson sent us later the following letter, addressed to
him by Dr. W.'s daughter, giving further information about the
pamphlet.

Edinburgh, June 9th, 1896.

MY DEAR COUSIN,— I know well about the incident in the pamphlet to
which you refer, as I was the little girl whose life was saved by the warning
my mother had so mysteriously given her. I was about ten years old at
the time, but remember it all as if it only happened yesterday.

The person whom my father called on, and who confirmed from her own
memory the truth of the story, was the landlady of our Trinity lodgings.
I do not know if she is alive now or not, probably not. My brother G.,
whom I think you know, went with me to see why the people were
all running towards Granton, and we both saw the engine and tender lying
by the sea. Our names were altered in the pamphlet, as my father
did not wish it made public that the incident had happened in his own
family, though a good many friends and relations knew about it. In all
other respects the account given is exact.

Miss W. writes to us : —

Edinburgh, November 27th, 1896.

I fear I cannot give you any exact information as to the letter written by
my mother at the time of the accident to which you refer. I think it was
either to an aunt of mine or to an old friend, both of whom are now dead.
It occurred so long ago that few people remember anything about it.

No. CXXXVIIL— VOL. VIII. APRIL, 1807.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Members and Associates 49

Meeting of the Council 49

General Meeting 50

Dr. Bramwell on Hypnotism 59

Note on "An Exposure" 64

NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

BEVAN, Miss N. H., Chalet Passiflora, Cannes, France.

BROOKE, COL. CHAS. K., Army and Navy Club, Pall Mall, London, W.

Cousens, John S., Wanstead, Essex.

Cowan, William H., 11, Malborough-road, Bournemouth.

HAMILTON, W. STIRLING, Woodgates, Horshain.

HARRIS, MRS. LEVERTON, 4, Green-street, Park-lane, London, W.

HARVEY, ALFRED S., Hurstbourne, Bishops wood-road, Highgate, N.

JESSUP, A. E., Villa St. Dominique, Valescure, St. Raphael, (Var), France.

STONE, MRS. C. H., 130, Boulevard Mont Parnasse, Paris.

WIGGLESWORTH, ALFRED, 34, Mecklenburgh-square. London, W.C.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

BROWN, HENRY T., Hillcrest, Winchester, Mass.

CHARD, THOMAS S., 534, North State-street, Chicago, 111.

DERBY, CAPTAIN GEORGE McC., 3,232, Prytania-street, New Orleans, La.

LIBRARIAN, Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge, Mass.

ROBERTS, PERCY, c/o Hennen Building, New Orleans, La.

WHIPPLE, MRS. SHERMAN L., Walnut-place, Brookline, Mass.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

The Council met on March 12th at the Rooms of the Society. Mr.
H. Arthur Smith was voted to the chair. There were also present,

50 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1897.

Sir Augustus K. Stephenson, Dr. A. W. Barrett, Dr. Abraham
Wallace, and Messrs. F. W. H. Myers, F. Podmore, and Sydney
C. Scott.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed as correct.

Mr. St. George Lane Fox and Dr. Chas. Lloyd Tuckey were
co-opted as Members of the Council for the current year.

Two new Members and eight new Associates, whose names and
addresses are given above, were elected. The election of six new
Associates of the American Branch was recorded. It was also agreed
that the name of Mrs. Gushing, of the American Branch, but now
residing in Europe, be transferred to the English List.

Some presents to the Library were reported, and a vote of thanks
passed to the donors.

The House and Finance Committee presented a Report and an
Estimate of Income and Expenditure for the current year. The
Report was adopted by the Council, some of its recommendations
having been already carried out.

It was agreed that subsequent to the General Meetings already
arranged for April 23rd and May 28th, one should be also held on
July 2nd, at 4 p.m.

Several other matters having been disposed of, it was agreed that
the next meeting of the Council should be at the Westminster Town
Hall, at 3 p.m., on Friday, April 23rd, previous to the General
Meeting at 4 p.m. on that day.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 85th General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, March 12th, at 8.30 p.m. ; DR. A.
WALLACE in the chair.

DR. WALLACE said : " Mr. Myers proposes to give us this evening
the first part of his paper on ' Hysteria and Genius.' These states
are most interesting and important subjects for psychical investigation.
That loss of nerve equilibrium combined with the various and peculiar
phenomena found in hysterical subjects is well known to most people
and especially to physicians ; the rarer manifestation of Genius is
equally interesting and even more deserving of scientific investigation
and elucidation. In the absence of our President I have been
unexpectedly asked to occupy the chair. Mr. Myers has not given
me any hint as to how he proposes to deal with these subjects, and
therefore I cannot say anything in anticipation of his paper, but from

AH:., is!»7.] General Meeting. 51

his extensive and precise knowledge of psychology, I am certain that
his inquiry into the nature of these states will be characterised by
his usual lucidity and ability."

MR. F. W. H. MYERS delivered an address on " Hysteria and
Genius," of which the following is a brief summary. [It is intended
that the address shall be concluded on April 23rd, at 4 p.m.]

My apology for addressing you, although a layman, on the subject
•of hysteria lies not only in the fact that of late years it is from the
psychological side that the cure of hysteria has been by far the most
successfully approached, but also in my own obligation to certain
recent researches which have corroborated and completed in a welcome
manner that general theory of the relations between supraliminal and
subliminal strata of consciousness which already seemed to me to hold
good in almost all those abnormal or supernormal states which enable
us in some degree to analyse the elements of man's personality.

Let us consider what kind of material the student of human
personality must desire to have before him, if he would predict the
next few steps of man's evolution from the many steps which man has
traversed in the past. He would desire to trace out the mental
development of race and individual, — from the amoeba and from the
embryo. To help in understanding this, he would desire also to trace
all dissolutive processes to which man is subject; — down to mania,
dementia, death. For he will justly argue that if we can trace a road
by which man has gone down hill, we may be tracing a road by which
man can also climb up. Processes of disintegration are lessons in
integration.

A small fraction only of all this desirable knowledge has yet been
acquired by science. Only of a still much smaller fraction can I make
use for my own special lines of forward-looking observation and
hypothesis. To what is known of human phylogeny and ontogeny I
can, of course, only refer in a general way. Nor, on the other hand,
can I penetrate to the lowest depths of human retrogression. The
psychology of insanity is as yet in a very early stage. Its difficulties
are greatly enhanced by the wide-spreading and miscellaneous
character of the disturbances which actual lesions of the brain may
set up. In some insanities recent observation has plausibly suggested
that " a pathological process has loosened the firmly connected system
of associations, so that a large number of those originally there have
become impossible, and a disintegration of the personality results."
But, as a rule, these morbid processes in insanity have gone too far
for our present power of analysis. Somewhat similarly, from the
phenomena of epilepsy, Hughlings Jackson has deduced the notion of

52 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1897.

brain-centres representing three levels of evolution, the highest of
which is exhausted by the epileptic discharge, leaving lower centres,
which are generally subject to the inhibition of the highest centres,
to function in profitless disorder. But here also we can hardly
particularise this broad conception, which concerns rather the general
government of the body's motion than the interrelation of definite
sensations and ideas. When, on the other hand, we rise from these
lower deeps to the comparatively shallow disturbances of the psychical
ocean to which the vague and meaningless title of hysteria is commonly
given, we begin to be able to trace in some detail the upward and
downward currents ; — those emergences of subliminal, submergences of
supraliminal faculty, which thereafter continue, as I hold, to be
traceable throughout the whole range of abnormal and supernormal
modifications of personality.

Now at first sight it is by no means easy to give any rational
interpretation whatever to certain hysterical symptoms ; — still less to
introduce them into any continued series of psychological phenomena.
The witch's anaesthetic spot, for instance, seems at first a mere oddity.
The hysteric's retrenchment of the visual field seems a definite optical
disease. Neither of these anomalies has any clear connection with
fixed ideas, or with interchangeable strata of personality. Yet Dr.
Pierre Janet and M. Binet, in France, and Drs. Breuer and Freud, in
Vienna (with others whom I need not mention here), have shown by
patient and penetrating observation, that there is veritably such a
connection ; and that hysterical lesions may be all of them — in their
inception at any rate — essentially intellectual lesions, depending, that
is to say, upon those delicate cortical changes which correspond to
ideas, rather than on any grosser cerebral injury.

In the first place Dr. Janet has worked out his view of the misere
psychologique of the hysteric. The maintenance of a normal personality
requires something of concentrative force, — some form of nervous
energy expended in maintaining the unity of mental action. In mania
this concentrated energy is almost wholly in default. We see ideational
centres functioning wildly, unguided and uninhibited, much as we see
motor centres functioning wildly in epilepsy ; — centres which even in
mania were still largely under control. In various forms of "paranoia"
or "delusional insanity," again, there is a loosening of associative and
concentrative bonds. The mental energy strays along random tracks,
from which perhaps it can only be recalled by a central effort of
attention for a few minutes at a time.

Between states of this kind and ordinary sanity there are many
gradations. In no man, indeed, is the central power sufficient to keep

APE., 1897.] General Meeting. 53

the course of thought steady as respiration or circulation is kept steady.
With most men, for instance, hunger and fatigue temporarily impair
memory. Now the typical hysteric, — the hysteric of the Salpetriere, —
is permanently in a state of insufficient central control. She gradually
lets slip from her grasp one element after another of faculty really
necessary for the proper conduct of life. Observe then that from the
first this selection is in some sense an intellectual selection. It is not
the case with the hysteric, as it often is, for instance, with the aphasic,
that definite disease invades definite cerebral areas. Rather, the
hysteric can keep what she most wishes to keep ; she lets go what she
thinks and cares less about. This kind of selection is seen in an
extreme form when, for instance, the hysteric can recognise by touch
nothing but her own rings, combs, and fringe of hair. Observe,
moreover, that the sense of pain is one of the forms of faculty most
often dropped. This is in the first place a valuable indication of the
comparative facility with which that sense is dissociable from physical
injury ; — a facility of which hypnotism of course avails itself. Again,
this analgesia is probably all the commoner because the hysteric makes
no conscious effort to retain the sense of pain. She is willing to let
that go ; — as we should all desire to do if no serious risk were involved
in the loss of that warning of incipient injury. And in the analgesia
of the hysteric in fact (this is an ingenious observation of Dr.
Janet's), very little risk is involved. Patients suffering from analgesia
caused by actual nervous decay (as in syringo-myelitis) frequently
burn or otherwise injure themselves. Hysterics hardly ever do so.
The truth is that with the hysteric the sensibility to pain is not
absolutely abolished. Something at least persists subliminally which
is not indeed recognisable as pain, but which continues to supply that
special warning which (as the case of the syringo-myelitic patient
shows us) mere general subconscious attention is not able to supply.
That this is so in fact, — that there does persist a subliminal percep-
tion of even small stimuli, — is shown in a quite different way by
the elegant experiments of Binet and others, where the analgesic
hysteric having been, say, pricked seven times with a pin out of her
sight is then told to think of a number, — and thinks of seven ; or
to draw a group of lines, and draws seven lines ; — or spontaneously
has a hallucination of seven black points. That which would have
been perceived by a healthy supraliminal personality as pain, is
now ignored by that personality, is perceived by the subliminal
personality in some manner not clearly definable, and is com-
municated again to the supraliminal personality in a transmuted or
symbolical form.

54 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1897.

Here we are at the starting point both of fixed ideas and of the
inspirations of genius. Genius, as I shall maintain later on, consists
largely in subliminal uprushes which express symbolically the result of
observation and inference of which the supraliminal self is not aware.
Raphael, giving a tinge of unearthly beauty to the Madonna's eyes, is
utilising the same subliminal and symbolical transmutation of experience
which led the hysteric to draw seven points for the seven pin-pricks.
But while that unnoted experience of Raphael's might be called
impalpable — was something too delicate for deliberate formulation —
the hysteric's unnoted experience was not impalpable, but merely
morbidly unfelt. The difference is an important one. Plainly indeed
it is not likely that we should learn much of value from a mere indirect
reproduction of impressions which we ought to have received direct.
When an element properly supraliminal is submerged, it is apt to
become also isolated ; it turns into a positive or a negative idee, fixe.
This last phrase needs some explanation. The name of " fixed idea " i&
commonly given to an idea which is not only unmodifiable but intru-
sive ; which forces itself on supraliminal attention, although it is not
amenable to supraliminal control. I think, however, that the term
may instructively be extended to negative cases ; — to idees fixes of
defect ; — to hysterical disabilities of every kind. If the disability is,
say, mutism or " astasie-abasie," — inability to speak, or to stand and
walk, — one sees at once that here an idea is at work. The inability to
walk does not depend on a lesion of nerves innervating special muscles ;
for those very muscles can be used perfectly well in other ways. It
depends upon the loss of an acquired synergy, a complex muscular
process, which the mind comprises under a single conception, " the act
of walking," and which has now dropped, as a whole, out of supraliminal
reach. That is plainly a negative idee fixe. But the same explanation
must, I think, be extended to hysterical losses of function of a kind
much less clearly suggestive of what we should call an idea. Thus the
plaques or zones of anaesthesia, — the " witch-marks " of our ancestors
— are generally distributed on the persons of hysterics in what seems a
random fashion. Unless where there is hemianaesthesia, the arrangement
of these patches seldom even seems to take account of true anatomical
areas. As depicted by Charcot, Pitres, etc., the shading which indi-
cates anaesthetic tracts looks as if it had been put on fantastically by
a child in the nursery. My own impression is that this is in truth
about the nearest parallel. The "anaesthetic bracelets" and "anaes-
thetic boots," patches of anaesthesia corresponding to the areas which a
bracelet or a boot would cover, suggest to me irresistibly the fantastic
dreamlike play of the subliminal self. Just so wayward and incoherent

APR., 1897.] General Meeting. 55

beneath a childish attempt at coherency shall we often find the motor
messages of the subliminal self ; — that automatic script which in nine
cases out of ten is but nonsense, more or less plausible. Manifestations
like these are for the subliminal self, in my view, much what the
" middle-level " incoherent movements of an epileptic fit are for the
supraliminal. I call, in short, an "anaesthetic bracelet" a negative
ide"e fixe, and I consider that when the supraliminal centralisation
became too weak to retain within control the sensitivity of the whole
surface of the body, some freakish dream of a lower stratum selected
just this bracelet area as having a kind of intellectual unity, and drew
down its sensitivity into a subliminal and unreachable realm.

We have here, I should go on to say, the first hint of definite
stigmata. Tumefied cruciform or other symmetrical marks are by no
means always connected with profound meditation on Christian sym-
bols. In a recent case in America they occurred spontaneously in a
woman whom it was impossible to present as a type of meditation or
of sanctity. In other cases they have followed hypnotic suggestion ;
thus showing that the vis vesicatrix Naturae, if I may so term it, — the
subliminal power of modifying secretion, — can respond to so merely
geometrical a notion as that of cruciformity.

All hysterical symptoms then, I say boldly, are equivalent to idees
fixes; and a hysterical access is the explosion of an idee fixe. We speak
of an epileptic fit as an explosive discharge of a certain tract of the
brain, — largely motor, but showing in its "intellectual aura" certain
recurrent elements of thought or imagery inevitably involved in the
excessive excitation of that particular tract. Similarly, 1 should define
a " fit of hysterics " as an explosive discharge, on a smaller scale, of a
tract of the brain delimited 'by its association with a particular set of
conceptions which have become morbidly sensitive, and morbidly
isolated from that general interchange and association of our ideas
among themselves, which we may call our psychical circulation.

Notions like these, suggested to me largely by Dr. Janet's experi-
ments, find (as seems to me) a strange confirmation in the more recent
Studien uber Hysterie of Drs. Breuer and Freud. These physicians have

had to deal, most of all in Dr. Breuer's case of Anna O , with

hysterics of much higher intellectual calibre than the patients of the
Salpetriere.

Fraiilein O , as will be seen when her case is read in detail,

became in hypnosis particularly acute in tracing her own subliminal
operations. Suffering, as she did, from a number of distressing and even
dangerous symptoms, she co-operated with eagerness and intelligence
in her own cure. She was at last able to trace each one of her bizarre

56 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1897.

bodily symptoms to some definite mental shock, received during a
period of excessive strain, while she was nursing her father in his last
illness. The results were like permanent nightmares founded on very
trifling facts, — horrible exaggerations of moments of distress or fear.
But it was noticeable that this conversion or transformation of
psychical shock into corporeal injury or disability occurred in the
realm both of the vaguer organic sensations (such as nausea or spasms),
and also of definite sensory disturbances (macropsy, etc.), and most
remarkably of all in the form of disturbances of speech.

I repeat, then, that the collection of cases published by these
physicians under the title Studien iiber Hystdrie, seems to me to make
it probable that all hysterical symptoms, without exception, have
their origin in some localised and functional affection of the brain,
of a type which the metaphors that I have been using set before us,
perhaps, as plainly as is at present possible. This view again is
strengthened by the frequent occurrence in hysteria of acquisitions
(and not only losses) of faculty. It is not unusual to find great
hypersesthesia in certain special directions (tactile, auditory, perception
of light, <fec.), combined with hysterical loss of sensation of other kinds.
Binet, for instance, has described certain cases in which the impress of
a coin upon the skin was perceived by an hysteric with many times
the distinctness with which it was perceivable by normal persons.
Such occasional quickenings of faculty were, in my view, pretty
certain to accompany the instability of psychical threshold which
is the distinguishing characteristic of hysteria. These also are a
kind of capricious idees fixes ; only the caprice in such cases raises
what was submerged, instead of submerging what was previously
emergent. This view, of course, assumes that the high sensibility, the
potential hyperaesthesia, exists already in latency in the subliminal
self ; — ready, as it were, to be tossed to the surface by a psychical
storm.

This, in fact, I hold ; and here is the point where hysteria comes
into relation with higher psychical conditions, — genius among them.
Suppose that in a case of instability of the psychical threshold ; — ready
permeability, if you will, of the psychical diaphragm separating the
supraliminal from the subliminal self, — the elements of emergence tend
to increase and the elements of submergence to diminish. Suppose
that it comes to be the case that the permeability depends upon the
force of the uprushes from below the diaphragm rather than on the
tendency to sink downwards from above it. We shall then reach the
point where the vague name of hysteria must give place to the vague
name of genius. The uprushes from the subliminal self will now be the

APR., 1897.] General Meeting. 57

important feature ; the downdraught from the supraliminal will be
trivial in comparison. Newton might forget whether he had eaten his
dinner or not ; but the loss of alert attention to bodily needs was more
than compensated for by the presentation to him by "intuition,"
" geometrical instinct," or whatever we call it, of conceptions which
mere deliberate voluntary work might corroborate but could not
have suggested.

In Newton's case the uprush came in waking hours, and its content
was wholly congruous with his voluntary lines of thought ; so much so
that the distinction between inspiration and labour may by some
persons here be thought fanciful. But pass now to another manifes-
tation of genius. Consider the dreams which supplied Robert Louis
Stevenson with plots for some of his stories. Here, too, the content of
the uprush was congruous with the train of voluntary thought ;
congruous, but not so completely congruous as in Newton's case, since
the dream-stories had often a fantastic character which unfitted them
for publication. Stevenson is here midway between Newton and the
somnambulist, between the mathematician who finds solutions in a
trance of thought, and the mathematician who finds the solution
written out by his bedside when he wakes in the morning. Somnam-
bulism or sleep-waking, again, is a title which includes various states
with many analogies. A subliminal uprush during sleep may, as in
Stevenson's case, seem merely a nocturnal prolongation of the diurnal
operation of genius. That is to say it may subserve, with more or less
rationality, the work of waking day ; whether it be the work of the
romancer composing tales or the work of the servant girl washing
dishes. But often also sleep-waking achievements run on lines of
their own, not helping the work of waking day, nor showing any great
community of memory with waking hours. Sleep-waking is then a
branch of what I have called sensory and motor automatism ; that is to
say, subliminal uprushes which do not commingle with the stream of
supraliminal life (like fresh water springs under the sea) but throw up
their products separately and distinguishably among waking ideas and
emotions (like lava from a volcano). Such a definition as this, as will
at once be seen, includes many distinctly hysterical phenomena. All
these classes are in fact interwoven, each title denoting only the
prevalent quality of the subliminal uprush in each given case. Where
the uprush is morbid and the downdraught disabling, we call the con-
dition hysteria. Where the uprush is helpful and the downdraught
insignificant we call the condition genius. Where the uprush is
nocturnal, the downdraught here being represented by the abeyance of
supraliminal faculty in sleep, we call the condition somnambulism.

58 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APH., 1897.

Where the uprush is not morbid, but yet not confluent nor congruous
with supraliminal operations, we call the condition automatism.

Finally, we arrive at another division not based on precisely the
same logical lines. The various conditions which I have been
describing are spontaneous conditions, — for good or evil. But it has
been discovered that many of them are imitable or reproducible by
empirical artifice. Using a word equally vague with the words
hysteria, genius, somnambulism, or automatism, we class these artifices
and their results together and call them hypnotism. In hypnotism
we have come round to an operation almost exactly the reverse of
hysteria, although depending upon the same psychical mechanism.
In hysteria useful elements of personality spontaneously sank into
submergence, and noxious elements spontaneously emerged from
latency. In hypnotism we artificially submerge noxious elements and
we elicit from latency elements which subserve our ends. Each
condition in turn illustrates the same psychical structure ; nor, I
think, can any one of them be understood without careful study of
the rest.

DR. WALLACE, in inviting questions or discussion, thanked Mr.
Myers for his most interesting paper. Any one acquainted with the
ordinary medical text-book literature as to the nature of hysteria
knows that there exists a great difficulty in explaining the varied
nervous phenomena, but the psychological generalisation made by Mr.
Myers forms a basis for grouping these and explaining their treatment
by hypnotic suggestion. He regretted that the audience did not
contain more members of the medical profession.

DR. BRAMVVELL, in reference to the supposed connection between
degeneration and genius, said two points raised by Mr. Myers appeared
to be specially worthy of notice.

First, the failings of the man of genius were certain to attract
attention, while those of more obscure individuals were apt to escape
notice. From personal experience, Dr. Bramwell was inclined to think
that stimulants were more frequently taken in excess amongst the stolid
and unimaginative than amongst the highly nervous. The two classes,
moreover, took them for different reasons. The first usually to procure
excitement, the second for the purpose of dulling mental pain.

Secondly, it was natural that a being with a highly developed
nervous system should be more prone to mental disturbances than the
stupid and lymphatic, but that in itself did not prove degeneracy.
Further, the genius had more demands made upon his strength than
other men, and like the raQe-horse, would run till he dropped. The
lower anir „*. however, the nervous example of his class, was kept for

APR., 1897.] Dr. Bramwell on Hypnotism. 59

racing purposes alone, and was not compelled to drag the plough at
other times. The man of genius, on the other hand, in addition to
doing the work most suited to him, had frequently also to painfully
and laboriously earn the daily bread. The same amount of care
was rarely bestowed on men and women as upon valuable lower
animals.

DR. BRAMWELL ON HYPNOTISM.

The most important contribution to the current number of Brain
(Part IV., 1896) is an article on "The Evolution of Hypnotic Theory"
by Dr. J. Milne Bramwell. The greater part of this article is
reprinted from Dr. Bramwell's papers on Hypnotism which have
recently appeared in our Proceedings ; but the question of the use of
hypnotism in therapeutic practice is treated somewhat more fully and
the attacks that have been made on it from time to time are examined
in detail, from the point of view of the physiologists and medical men
to whom the periodical is addressed. We give here an account of
some of the new matter in the paper. Dr. Bramwell writes : —

According to Professor Benedikt, of Vienna, the majority of the
results attributed to hypnotic suggestion are fallacious, the patient simply
deceiving the physician. As to the alleged cures of alcoholism, he asks,
where are these cases? There can be no possible doubt, he says, that
the medical men who reported them are to-day aware of their error. Why
are they silent ? The true explanation of the supposed cures is simply to
be found in the fact that the patients want to be left alone, and therefore
say they are cured. Amongst so-called successful cases at least 90 per cent,
must be eliminated for this reason.

This opinion is entirely opposed to facts. Those who formerly reported
cases of hypnotic cure continue to do so, while many others have joined
their ranks. The following, amongst others, may be quoted as having
recently testified to the therapeutic value of hypnotic treatment : van Eeden,
van Renterghem, Forel, Freud, Gerster, Grossmann, de Jong, Scholz, von
Schrenck-Notzing, Tatzel, Wetterstrand, Brunnberg, Hecker, Krafft-Ebing,
Ringier, Bergmann, Briigelmann, Fulda, Herzberg, Hirt, Schmidt, Vogt,
Schmeltz, Lemoine, Joire, Voisin, de Me'zeray, Be"rillon, Bernheim,
Li6beault, Dumontpallier, Gorodichze, Bonjour, Desplats, Bourdon,
Tissie", &c.

Benedikt would like to know what has become of the dipsomaniacs
said to have been cured by hypnotism. As regards my own cases, I can
give a very satisfactory reply. Some are actively engaged in business, or in
successfully conducting medical practice ; one has since been elected a
Member of Parliament, while others are happy wives and mothers. In

60 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1897.

most of them the disease had been of long duration, varying from about
five to fifteen years ; and in some presented all its worst symptoms ; for
example, the patient who is now a Member of Parliament had formerly
several attacks of delirium tremens and epilepsy. The duration of the cure
has lasted from two to over six years.

Benedikt's suggestion that dipsomaniacs pretend to be cured in order to
be left alone is amusing. Drunkards sometimes secretly obtain drink in
ingenious ways, but I never heard of one being able successfully to pretend
that he was sober when dead drunk, or in good health when suffering from
delirium tremens.

In the " Zeitschrift fiir Hypnotismus, " part 1, 1896, Wetterstrand
reported 38 cases of morphinism treated by hypnotic suggestion. Of these
28 were cured, 3 relapsed, and in 7 no result was obtained. In each
instance, the morphia had been injected subcutaneously. Many of the
cases were exceedingly grave and of long standing, and some were com-
plicated with the cocaine and alcohol habit. With several the abstinence
treatment had been tried without success — sometimes more than once.
One of the successful cases — a medical man — had taken morphia for
eighteen years, and during the last four years cocaine also. Another
medical man, Dr. Landgren, recorded his own case in the same journal.
Over five years have elapsed since he was successfully treated by
Wetterstrand. Other methods, including residence in a retreat, &o., had
failed.

I do not for a moment pretend that by hypnotism one can cure every-
thing and everybody, and agree with Braid in thinking that he who talks of
a universal remedy is either a knave or a fool. On the other hand, I have
seen many cases of functional nervous disorder cured or relieved by
hypnotism, which had previously resisted long, careful and varied medical
treatment. For example, I recently reported eight cases of " Imperative
Ideas," in which hypnotic suggestion had been successfully employed, the
first dating from 1889, the last from 1894. Of these one afterwards died of
influenza, but the others remain well. In some instances the original
mental trouble had been a grave one, and the patients had suffered from
delusions and hallucinations.

In support of his own conviction that the subject's will is
not under the control of the operator, Dr. Bramwell quotes the
observations and opinions of Professor Beaunis, Dr. Crocq, Richer,
Gilles de la Tourette, Brouardel, Pitres, and Dr. de Jong, on the power
possessed by the subject of resistance to suggestion. Delboeuf also
found that one of his subjects, an excellent somnambule, despite his
reiterated and emphatic commands, absolutely refused when hypnotised
to fire a revolver — which she had been accustomed to use, but which
in this case was, of course, unloaded — at two supposed robbers. Dr. .
Charpignon again is of opinion that it is much easier to restore moral
rectitude, by means of hypnotic suggestion, to a somnambule who

, i8»7.] Dr. Bramwell on Hypnotism. 61

has lost it, than to pervert, by the same means, a person of high
moral character.

With regard to hypnotic control over intimate organic processes,
the views of Delbceuf are given. He thinks that suggestion is not only
capable of inhibiting sensations of pain intimately associated with
organic injury, and of modifying or arresting various morbid nervous
conditions which arise more or less directly from it; but that it can also
influence the organic changes which, under ordinary circumstances,
would have resulted from the injury. Thus, when pain is removed or
relieved, this really means the disappearance or decrease of one of the
factors in an organic malady. Delbceuf reported numerous cases of
accidents in which, the pain resulting from the wound having been
removed by suggestion, the healing process took place with unusual
rapidity. Further to test the influence of suggestion in this direction,
he tried an experiment on the subject already referred to, having
previously obtained her consent to it. With a red-hot iron, 8 m.m.
in diameter, he produced two small burns resembling one another as
closely as possible, one on each of her arms, — at the same time
suggesting that she should feel pain in the left arm alone. The
suggestion taking effect, he found next morning that the right arm
presented a definite eschar, the exact size of the iron, and without
inflammation or redness ; on the left was a wound of about 3 c.m. in
diameter with inflamed blisters. Next day the left arm was much
worse, and she complained of acute pain. This was removed by
suggestion, and the wound then rapidly healed.

Delbceuf's conception of the method of action in these cases is very
similar to that of Mr. Myers. The action of the organs concerned can-
not, as we know, be modified directly by the will, though it is probable
that in the lower animals both consciousness and will are involved in
them. With the progress of development, however, we may suppose
that the attention of the animal becomes directed more or less
exclusively (1) to the organs which place it in direct relationship to the
external world and warn it of events of importance to its existence or
well-being, and (2) to the means of attack or defence which it learns to
use from day to day with greater certainty and vigour. At the same
time, the cares of the interior are got rid of more and more completely,
and are confided to a servant who has been trained to look after them,
and whose zeal can be depended upon. In a highly developed animal,
such as man, the mechanical regularity with which internal organs
act renders conscious attention regarding them unnecessary. Some-
times, however, the machine goes wrong, while the power which used
voluntarily to regulate it has dropped out of the normal consciousness.

62 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APE., 1897.

To find a substitute for it, we must turn to hypnotism, whereby the long
lost control over the internal mechanism of the body is regained.

On the relation of suggestion in the normal condition to hypnotic
suggestion, Dr. Bramwell quotes Mr. Ernest Hart's comparison of
alleged cures by hypnotism with the Lourdes cures ; Mr. Hart says,
" So far as I can see, the balance is in favour of the faith-curer of the
chapel and the grotto. The results at least are proportionately as
numerous, and they are more rapid." Dr. Bramwell asks on what
statistics this statement is founded, remarking that while hypnotic
cases are recorded in the same manner as ordinary medical ones, many
of the alleged cures at Lourdes are rendered valueless as evidence by
the fact that no medical examination of the patient had been made
immediately before and after the reputed miracle, nor is there any list
of the number treated. He lays stress on the points of contrast
between suggestions associated with emotional states and suggestion in
hypnosis, and shows that since the potent results of the former often
depend on a combination of faith and ignorance, — e.g., on a superstitious
belief in charms or in quack remedies of various kinds, — advancing
knowledge is ever likely to rob them of their powers. On the other
hand, hypnotic suggestion does not run a similar risk, being founded
on science and not on superstition.

Some further space is devoted to a critical examination of Mr.
Hart's views, and Dr. Bramwell observes that the various mesmeric
fallacies combatted in the British Medical Journal have often been
refuted, and have long ceased to claim the attention of scientific men,
while this periodical omits to give any account of the physiological,
psychological and therapeutical observations on hypnotism which
have been so largely recorded by many distinguished Continental
scientists.

Towards the end of his paper, Dr. Bramwell enters on an eloquent
and weighty defence of the work of our Society. " An attempt has
been made," he says, "to discredit hypnotism on account of its connec-
tion with the Society for Psychical Research. Mr. Hart, for example,
classes together ' spiritists, the stage hypnotist, the living magnets, the
Mahatmas, the belated Psychical Researchers, and the ghost-seers.
But they are only the stunted remnants, the vestigial and atrophied
traces indicating the latter stages of ages of development, in which we
have outgrown the period when such follies and fallacies were the
almost universal heritage of mankind.' If the members of the Society
would only employ the ' control tests ' which he had invented, it would
be doubtful whether they would find material sufficiently diverting to
enable the Society to exist."

APR., is!)?.] Dr. Bramwell on Hypnotism. 63

" The Society for Psychical Research," says Dr. Bramwell, " was
established for the purpose of investigating those obscure phenomena
which alone, amongst all other natural phenomena, had remained
uninvestigated by modern science." Membership of the Society does
not imply the acceptance of any particular explanation of the
phenomena investigated, and as a matter of fact, one of the most
important branches of its work has been the exposure of the frauds
of professional mediums. As examples of this, he cites : —

(1) An investigation by William Crookea, Victor Horsley, and the late
Dr. A. T. Myers of an alleged supernatural phenomenon, to which
spiritualists attached great importance and the investigators none at all.
[See Proceed itigs S.P.R., Vol. III., p. 460.] (2) The complete destruction
by Dr. Hodgson of the Theosophical claim to miraculous powers and to
the existence of Mahatmas. (3) A series of experiments contrived to
illustrate the " Possibilities of Malobservation and Lapse of Memory."
These practically refuted the assertion that certain phenomena must be
due to spirits, because they could not have been produced by mortals.
Mr. S. J. Davey, a member of the Society, since deceased, gave several
years to the assiduous practice of certain tricks of sleight-of-hand ; these
he so successfully supplemented by ingenious psychological artifices as
to render them inexplicable. It would be difficult to find any piece of
laboratory work on attention comparable in subtlety and skill with Mr.
Davey's demonstrations ; while, if we wish to protect ourselves and our
fellow-creatures against fraud and imposture, this kind of reply is more
effective (although more difficult to obtain) than any vague vituperation
can be.

When we recognise that the Society has raised "control experiments"
to the level of a fine art, the futility of Mr. Hart's suggestion as to his
control tests is obvious.

The explanation of my connection with the Society is a simple and
natural one. Shortly after I commenced hypnotic work, the late Dr. A. T.
Myers drew my attention to the fact that certain members of the Society
were engaged in similar researches ; and I found in articles — such as " The
Problems of Hypnotism" and "The Subliminal Consciousness," by the
late Edmund Gurney and F. W. H. Myers — the only attempt, with which I
was acquainted, as far as this country was concerned, to find a scientific
explanation of the phenomena of hypnotism.

Personally I neither believe in, nor have investigated, spiritists, ghosts,
or Mahatmas ; but the latter fact renders my opinions regarding them
valueless. Mr. Hart's criticisms raise a further question : Do scientific
men necessarily identify themselves with, or believe in, all they investigate ?
This assumption is surely unjustifiable ; and to confuse Psychical Researchers
with Mahatmas — the judge on the bench, so to say, with the convicted
criminal in the dock — shows want of discrimination.

Another question remains : Should the scientific examination of obscure
and possibly fraudulent phenomena be condemned ? According to Mr.

64 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1897.

Hart : ' ' With so many serious problems awaiting solution, it is not only
deplorable, but in the highest degree discreditable, that minds made for
better things should waste their powers in dabbling with what is simply a
despicable and degrading imposture." Now, not only do we owe Braid's
discovery of the subjective origin of hypnotic phenomena to the investigation
of mesmerism, which he had previously regarded as imposture or self-
deception, but science in general has been evolved from the errors and
superstitions which preceded its birth. Further, as Dr. Wilks tells us :
" Medicine began as a superstition, covered and surmounted by fancies and
crude theories. By getting rid of these advance has been made, but the fact
is not yet sufficiently realised that many of the old fancies still remain in the
profession."

Would it be advisable to place the psychologist, like the physiologist,
under Government control ? Should investigators be compelled to restrict
themselves to certain approved subjects, and be refused permission to walk
in any of the by-paths of science, lest they should be accosted by some
unrecognised question which solicited investigation ? Surely freedom to
investigate what one likes, when one likes, and where one likes, is not an
unworthy ideal, though possibly it may be difficult of attainment.

NOTE ON "AN EXPOSURE."

In an article in the last number of the Journal, headed " An Exposure,"
we gave an account of an investigation by Mr. E. T. Nisbet of a supposed
case of spiritualistic communications through the ticking of a clock, the
principal medium in the case being a miner, whom we called G. Mr. Nisbet's
statement that Mr. L. (through whose introduction he obtained the loan of
the clock for investigation) " is now quite disillusioned about G." might
lead to the impression that Mr. L. has given up the whole story. This is not
the case. Mr. L. appears to be quite disillusioned about the miner ; but
he still clings to the story, relying on the evidence of the miner's wife. As
to the miner, he says : — "He has been often charged with fraud and con-
demned as untruthful ; I have myself proved him unreliable, and have the
most positive assurance needful that when he has given some stances for
materialisation, he has provided himself with white raiment to simulate
spirit drapery. I [possess] a piece off that which he assumed at one seance,
where he was grabbed ; and with a piece of this fabric there was also cut
away a piece of his body underclothing."

We need hardly add that if we had known these facts, we should not
have thought it worth while to trouble Mr. Nisbet to undertake the
investigation.

No. CXXXIX.— VOL. VIII. MAT, 1897.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Members and Associates 65

Meeting of the Council 66

Qeneral Meeting 66

Experiments in Crystal Vision 71

Cases 74

Correspondence 80

NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

CAMERON, GEORGE FENTON, M.D., J.P., 34, Guilford-st., London, W.C.

DAVIDSON, JAMES MACKENZIE, M.B.C.M. (Aberdeen), 76, Portland-
place, London, W.

ENCOMBE, VISCOUNT, Bachelor's Club, 8, Hamilton-place, London, W.

FEILDING, THE LADY LOUISA, Broome Park, Betchworth, Surrey.

HORRACK, PHILIP J. DE, 4, Rue du Ge'ne'ral Foy, Paris.

LIBRARIAN (HoN.) of the Constitutional Club, Northumberland-ay., W.C.

Matthews, Mrs., 15, Stanley-gardens, London, W.

Maxwell, Sir John Stirling, Bart, M.P., 48, Belgrave-square,
London, S.W.

White Leedham, D.L., F.C.S., 16, Wetherby-gdns., London, S.W.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

AGESLESTO, M., c/o Nusbaum Book & News Co., 274, Main-st., Norfolk, Va.
COPE, PORTER F., The Bertram, 33rd & Chestnut-sts., Philadelphia, Pa.
EASTON, PROF. MORTON W., M.D., Ph.D., 224, South 43rd-st., Phila., Pa.
McEwEN, ALFRED, 512, La Salle-a venue, Chicago, 111.
MONTGOMERY, CHAS. A., Box 2,444, New York, N.Y.
MURPHY, M. J., 614, Center-avenue, Bay City, Mich.
RUSSELL, MRS. HENRY E., 6, Mercer Circle, Cambridge, Mass.

66 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1897.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

The Council met on April 23rd at the Town Hall, Westminster.
The President was in the chair. There were also present, Professor
"W. F. Barrett, Professor H. Sidgwick, Dr. Abraham Wallace, Mr.
F. W. H. Myers, and Mr. Sydney C. Scott.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed as correct.

Three new Members and six new Associates, whose names and
addresses are given above, were elected. The election of seven new
Associates of the American Branch was recorded.

It was resolved that the General Meeting on May 28th should be
held in the afternoon instead of in the evening as previously arranged,
the chair to be taken at 4 p.m.

Several other matters having been disposed of, it was agreed that
the next meeting of the Council should be at the Westminster Town
Hall, at 3 p.m., on Friday, May 28th, previous to the General
Meeting at 4 p.m. on that day.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 86th General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall, on Friday, April 23rd, at 4 p.m. ; the President,
Mr. W. Crookes, in the chair.

PROFESSOR SIDGWICK read a paper entitled " A Contribution to the
Study of Hysteria and Hypnosis," by DR. MORTON PRINCE, Instructor
in Nervous Diseases at the Harvard Medical School, U.S.A. The
writer remarked that one of the greatest obstacles to finding a satis-
factory explanation of hysterical and hypnotic phenomena has been the
tacit assumption that the psychical and physical conditions involved in
each case are always the same, whereas the phenomena are actually so
complex and various that no universal law governing all of them can
as yet be laid down. Hysteria may depend, for example, in part on
the contraction of the field of consciousness, or on conscious or sub-
conscious fixed ideas, in part on the lack of cerebral inhibition, in part
on self suggestion or external suggestion, etc. Consequently the
physiological processes and cerebral areas involved are probably
different in different cases, and the theory here advanced, which
supposes a localised "going to sleep" of some of the highest brain
centres, is not intended to cover all forms of hysteria or hypnosis,
though it applies to what is probably the most frequent kind of case,
viz., the automatic condition to which the hypnotised subject is
generally reduced.

MAY, Ks<»7] General Meeting. 07

The observations on which the theory was founded were made
several years ago, before the publication of the work of various French
psychologists — especially of Janet — which has recently thrown so much
lii,'ht on the subject of hysteria. The writer's experiments, made thus
independently, confirm in a striking manner many of Janet's results.
The experiments described referred to cases of hysterical anaesthesia
and paralysis, and they showed that the brain of the hysterics reacted
to external impressions, notwithstanding the apparent anaesthesia ; in
other words, that a hysteric who has lost the perception of sensation,
really does feel or see or hear, though he is not conscious of doing so.

The first case, Mrs. B., was one of traumatic hysteria and neuritis.
In consequence of an accident, in which her left shoulder was injured,
the patient developed a number of mental symptoms, and for two years
suffered from severe pain in her left shoulder and arm, which she was
practically unable to use. Examination showed that the inability was
merely hysterical. There was also slight anaesthesia over the inner side
of the arm and hand, which, after 18 months, suddenly became so pro
found that the patient could not feel the most severe pinches and
pricks on a certain part of her hand. Under these circumstances,
without giving her any hint of the experiments he intended to try, Dr
Morton placed a screen between her face and her hand, and pricked
and pinched the latter several times. She was quite unconscious that
anything was being done to her hand, but on being hypnotised and
questioned, gave an accurate account of what had been done. The
experiment was repeated several times, always with the same result.
It was also found that during the hypnotic trance, sensation com-
pletely returned in the previously anaesthetic hand. Later, the normal
sensation was restored by means of hypnotic suggestion.

The second case — that of Mrs. R. — was of hemi-anaesthesia, —
sensation being impaired all over the right half of the body, especially
in the arm, and entirely absent in the hand. She could finger and
handle objects, but not feel them. A bracelet-like line limited the
absolute anaesthesia of the hand at the wrist joint. Right hemianopsia
was also present with other optic troubles, and hearing, smell and taste
were diminished on the right side. There was no paralysis. When this
patient was hypnotised, sensation was at once completely restored, and
she was able to tell at once what objects were placed in her hand. All
her senses were restored to a normal condition, except that of sight ;
she was still unable to see out of the right half of pach eye. When
.awakened, the previous condition at once returned.

Experiments similar to those performed on Mrs. B. were carried
out with Mrs. R. Various stimuli having been applied without her

68 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1897.

knowledge to the anaesthetic hand, she was able, on being hypnotised,
to tell accurately what had been done to it. This showed that in her
case also sensation was really present in her ordinary condition, though
she was not conscious of it at the time, the anaesthesia being merely
functional. Thus it is seen that in hysterical anaesthesia of this sort,
the sensory cortical centres receive and record external impressions in
a perfectly healthy way. Another proof of this was that Mrs. R. could
finger and turn over in her hand any object placed in it, though
unconscious of the nature of the object. Unless the hand felt the
object, it would be impossible to use the hand thus.

The writer explains his observations on the basis of Hughlings
Jackson's theory that three different levels of evolution are represented
in the central nervous system, the most automatic and least complex
nervous arrangements being found at the lowest level, which is also the
most organised, — comparatively simple combinations of movements
being developed at an early period and persisting with relatively little
modification. The middle stratum represents a greater degree of com-
plication, and is automatic in a less degree than the lowest. The
middle centres are less organised, as development is continually taking
place in them, allowing new combinations of movements; <?.</.. the move-
ments involved in writing, sewing, type- writing and other manual occu-
pations after they have become habitual. The highest level includes —
roughly speaking — the frontal lobes of the brain, is concerned with the
most complex co-ordination of sensations and movements, and probably
supplies the greater part of the physical basis of consciousness.
Hence the conscious movements originate in the highest level and the
greater part of the unconscious movements in the middle level. In
the latter the sensations are associated together among themselves to a
certain extent and chains of memory are formed. When sensations
are transmitted to the highest level they enter into normal conscious-
ness,— the dominant consciousness, for the time being, of the individual.
The activity of this level thus constitutes the personality of the
individual. But when the activity of the frontal lobes (highest level) is
suppressed, the consciousness of the middle level becomes dominant and
stands out as a personality of a more or less automatic character. The
two levels may also act more or less independently and simultaneously;
but the interdependence of one level upon the other is essential for
mentation that shall completely subserve the intellectual wants of the
individual, and the highest level requires and is entirely dependent
upon the second level for all intercourse with the outer world.

In attempting to explain on this theory the phenomena of
hysterical anaesthesia in the two cases reported by him, the writer

MAY, 1897.] General Meeting. 69

conceives that the anaesthesia of hysteria is the inhibition or " going
to sleep " of certain limited areas or centres of the highest level
(frontal lobes), while hypnosis is the more or less complete inhibition or
going to sleep of the frontal lobes as a whole. In hysteria there is a
local suppression of function ; — in complete hypnosis a total suppression
of function of the highest level.

In the experiments described, the stimuli applied to the anaesthetic
hand produced sensory impressions which remained in the middle
level of the brain, not being able to reach the frontal lobes and affect
the normal consciousness. When the patient was hypnotised, and the
activity of the frontal lobes thus suppressed as a whole, the conscious-
ness of the middle level became predominant, constituting a " second
personality," which could remember the impressions received by the
same consciousness when it was not predominant. The hypnotised
subject is devoid of spontaneity and her acts are more or less
automatic, which is characteristic of the middle level.

This explanation also covers the case of automatic writing per-
formed unconsciously in the waking state (and during the performance
of which the writing hand in some cases becomes anaesthetic), which
the subject can describe in detail on being hypnotised.

MR. F. W. H. MYERS concluded his address 011 "Hysteria and
Genius." The following is a brief summary of what was said : —

From one point of view genius resembles hysteria, inasmuch as both
conditions imply a readier than ordinary permeability of what may be
called the psychical diaphragm which separates the supraliminal from
the subliminal self. But whereas in hysteria the main result of this
permeability is that fragments of faculty, needed for ordinary life,
sink down beyond voluntary control, in the case of genius, on the
other hand, the main result is that uprushes of subliminal faculty
co-operate with voluntary effort, and enrich the output of the supra-
liminal self. Genius, therefore, represents an increased command over
the whole psychical being ; an advance in integration, which means an
advance in the main line of development which our race is pursuing.
And since the most reasonable way of using the word norm in refer-
ence to a race in process of change will be to call the most advanced
point yet reached by any individual along a well-determined curve of
racial change the norm of that race, the man of genius may claim to
be the normal man in a sense truer than any in which the merely
' average man can be so.

The subliminal uprushes in which genius is thus defined as con-
sisting may take place along the whole extent of the spectrum of

70 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1897.

conscious faculty. Mention has been made in an earlier paper of such
uprushes or self-inspirations in connection with the most definite form
of faculty — namely, the mathematical. The answers to problems which
the calculating boy discerns ready-made on his mental black-board,
afford us the directest proof that an intellectual process has been sub-
liininally performed in support of the efforts of the supraliminal self.
Such definite statements, however, represent a very small portion of
this aid from beneath the surface ; and the symbolism in which such
messages come to us is generally of a vaguer kind.

There is no reason to assume that all our submerged mental opera-
tions are verbalised ; — expressed in articulate speech. Our own habitual
feeling that certain thoughts and emotions transcend the scope of
speech may perhaps represent some real subliminal preference for other
forms of symbolism. Messages from our submerged strata often take
the form of pictures, and even the meaningless arabesques sometimes
called, with little reason, " spirit-pictures/' may be a kind of stam-
mering attempt at a symbolism more congenial than speech. Conversely,
the awkward and roundabout oddity of much automatic script may
indicate that words are not the habitual vehicle for that section of
our thought.

At any rate, it is in the symbolism of Art — mainly non-verbal —
that the promptings of genius show themselves oftenest ; and one
great art, that of music, in its primitive potency and its indefinite
meaning, seems like a symbolism of which we have lost the key. Still
more marked is subliminal inspiration in the case of the emotions.
No psychological question can bear more momentously on human life
than the question whether the subliminal element in the passion of
love is purely organic — in which case love can be analysed into a
mixture of illusion and desire — or whether, on the other hand, the
truth lies with Plato, for whom the underlying force of love lies in
man's passion for immortality, and his recognition through the
medium of physical or moral beauty of his cosmic destiny in an
ideal world.

PROFESSOR MARCUS HARTOG expressed his sense of obligation to
Mr. Myers for the fertile conception of the subliminal consciousness
and the part it played in genius. He pointed out that its share is
even greater in deftness, or what may be called physical genius ; and
as an example, dwelt especially on the technique of direct or
impressionist painting, where each touch is totally different to the
sense when laid on from the effect it will produce when it takes its
place in the completed picture ; and on the impossibility of success
being achieved by the direct intention at every moment of the

MAY, iH!»:. ] Experiments in Crystal Vision. 71

supralirainal consciousness. A great step in advance will be taken
when educationists realise that to the subliminal consciousness belongs
the faculty of adjustment and allowance.

EXPERIMENTS IN CRYSTAL VISION.

The experiments here reported, in which some clairvoyant faculty
seems to have been shown, were made by Miss N. Gernet, a Russian
lady and Associate of the Society. She describes them in letters
to Mrs. Sidgwick, as follows : —

St. Petersburg, Basseynaya, 33, Lodg. 4,

October 13th/25th, 1896.

Friday last, the 4th/16th of October, we had our first sitting this year ; —
we, that is, Miss Marie Klado, an elderly lady, author of good stories for
children, and a still better medium ; Miss S. T., an English girl (born
here), my friend, — she is rather gifted psychically and wants to improve still
more, but does not quite believe in spiritual powers ; myself.

At 8 in the evening we began. Miss Klado and Miss T. sat down near
me, but not touching me. They were on a sofa in a corner of my study, and
I was seated on a chair (or rather a low oriental seat) in front of them at a
small table of black wood, uncovered, with a glass of water before me and two
high candles lighted, giving the necessary brilliant spot to gaze at in the
glass. Miss Klado never hypnotised me or even tried to, and I remain in
my clairvoyant experience always perfectly awake and in my natural state,
neither tired nor troubled anyhow. But her presence always helps me to see
quicker and better, and I feel my own power "electrise"" through hers
without any contact with her.

That evening her only role was then that of a "sympathetic current."
She sat and concentrated her thoughts as far as possible on the same subject
as me.

Miss T. was nearer to me and, looking at me and at the glass, tried to
suggest to me to see what she wanted, — that is, a certain person I never had
seen or even heard of (she only told me it was a lady, but not who, and even
had she done so, the name was unknown to me), whose surroundings and
even the town or country she lived in were a mystery to me, as well as to
Miss Klado. I had no clue whatever to what I could possibly see about this
lady.

Now Miss T. did not know herself much about the lady ; she has never
been to her house and has heard little about her way of living, so that she
could suggest to me the image of the person, but not of her pastime, dress,
or rooms.

We looked what time it was (a little over eight), and proceeded to pry in
the unknown lady's doings. As before, I always need some time to see
anything when I have not practised for some months. After ten or twelve

72 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1897.

minutes gradually the usual very small picture was formed in the brilliant
circle thrown by the lights in the glass (standing on a smooth white paper
laid on the table). I seldom see any colour but black, white, and spots of
light when there is a lamp, candles, or something of the sort (faces, when
they are larger, — only the head seen, for instance —sometimes have their
natural flesh colouring).

First I saw a slender woman with very fair hair and in a costume which
puzzled me as well as her doings. I described d mesure all that went on in
the glass, Miss T. saying nothing as yet. The figure began to move and I
could then make out that she was dressing ; she walked down the room,
lifted her arms, took something from a board, then stayed in front of what
was probably a mirror (I saw only the dark side), and dressed her hair on
the forehead. Then she washed her hands, and the moving to and from me
of her arms and of the essuie-main she held was perfectly distinct. She had
a tea-gown of light colour with long (Greek) sleeves.

The scene changed all at once. I saw her in another room, better lighted,
and a gentleman stood beside her, to whom she seemed to talk in an animated
way. The gentleman was inclined to be stout, with a light beard and the
hair a shade darker. When I came to this, Miss T. burst out laughing
and said, "Now I believe in it."

The description of the lady fitted to an astonishing degree, and in the
gentleman Miss T. recognised one of her relatives, who was reported to be
a devoted admirer of the lady. I broke off looking, the thought striking
me for the first time that in such a way we may really intrude on our
neighbour's private life and liberty. The lady living here, the next day my
friend, meeting another of her own relatives, enquired whether any one of
them had been at this lady's house. Then she came to me triumphant ; the
cousin I had seen had been there. The lady received him in a light gown
with long sleeves.

Now her and his outward appearance could have been suggested to me by
Miss T., as she knew both of them. But the visit at this very hour and the
dress of the lady, this none of us knew or could know.

So I think my experience was a success. Both [those present] and the
family of Miss T. were witnesses to the facts being true and accurate, and
told before asserting their reality. -^ GERNET

Miss Gernet writes later : —

November 25th/ December 5th, 1896.

I send you Miss Klado's testimony with the account of our former sitting
(the only one which we remember well, as it was written down by her at the
very moment). Miss Klado reads English pretty well, but did not attempt
to write it herself ; she gives her answer in French. As for Miss T., I hope
she will answer soon and then I shall send you her letter directly.

Miss Klado writes : —

St. Petersburg, November l±th/2<tth, 1896.

Je confirme que tout ce que Mlle Gernet vous a racont^ par rapport 4
sa vision de 1'amie de Mlle T., s'est trouve" verifie" le lendemain de notre

MAY, isD7.] Experiments in Crystal Vision. 73

stance, et quo Mlle Gernet n'avait aucune connaissance de la personne et des
circonstances qu'elle voyait. A mesure qu'elle voyaifc, elle nous racontait ce

qu'elle avnit vu. -,?

MARIE KLADO.

The account of the other sitting mentioned is as follows : —
St. Petersburg, Basseynaya, 33.

November 14&/26&, 1896.

Last winter we tried our first sitting for clairvoyance with Miss Klado
in her rooms. She wanted me to look for one of her acquaintances' doings,
{a gentleman who was perfectly unknown to me). The date and the exact
time we do not remember ; it was in the earliest evening hours of a winter
day near to Christmas.

First I saw a sort of library, (for the walls were covered with book-
shelves filled with volumes). The gentleman himself I did not see, but an
old one, with grizzled hair and disagreeable expression. This person was told
us afterwards to have been the host of the gentleman whom we looked for,
the master of the house where he spent his evening. They really began by
sitting and talking in the study of the host, where there were many books
on long shelves on the walls. Then the scene changed, and then I saw a
sort of drawing-room with a lamp hanging over a nicely arranged tea-table,
a very pretty lady busy with offering dishes to the other persons, whom
I saw dimly, and the dark head of the young gentleman (Prince D , now
dead) near her, at the table, which was true too. The prince was asked
to stay to tea (which in Russia holds the place of European supper-time),
•and the hostess, a pretty lady, was seated near him, and poured out
the tea.

The next day the prince was asked by Miss Klado about his spending
this evening, and my vision was found to be exact in most particulars.
Unfortunately he is now dead, called away at an early age. We do not
give the full name, because of the mother, who disapproves of publicity, and
would most certainly not like it. -^ GERNET

MARY KLADO.

Miss S. T., who prefers that her name should not be given, sent
Miss Gernet the following account, which was forwarded to us, of
her recollections of the sitting first described.

Some time ago, a friend of mine, Miss Gernet, asked me to try water-
gazing, and as I always felt a great interest in such subjects, I very willingly
complied with her request.

A few days later we met, and for my part I cannot deny that our
experiment was a complete success, as will be seen from the following
account.

The person chosen by me, and of whom I was to think on that occasion,
was unknown to my friend, nor was I ever in her house myself.

After gazing for some time into the water, my friend said that she saw a
room, and described it to me and how it was furnished. Then further on she

74 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1897.

said that a human figure appeared, that of a slight fair-haired woman, dressed
in a morning gown with wide sleeves, and which seemed to be either white
or a pale blue ; then my friend told me that she saw the door open and a
gentleman enter the room ; and on my friend describing his person, I recog-
nised him at once.

The very next day I hastened to that lady's house, and questioned her as
to where she was on the preceding evening, and how she was dressed. She
told me that, feeling rather unwell, she remained the whole evening at home in
her dressing room, and that she wore a pale blue dressing-gown that had
wide sleeves ! On examining her dressing room, I was astonished beyond
words to find how very accurate the vision was, every detail of it.

Some days after, I proposed to my cousin that we should try together ; but
on this occasion I looked and he thought. At first I only saw a mist and
then a female head appeared with something like a crown on her head ;
then on looking closer, I recognised it as the head dress worn by ladies
at Court.

My friend whom I saw, and whom my cousin also knew very well, is a
young actress, who, he further acquainted me, was performing that very
same night in a piece where she was to act a Russian Princess, dressed in the
national costume and wearing that peculiar head-dress seen by me.

Miss Gernet writes, when sending the above account : —

[December, 1896.]

You will notice two differences with my version. (1) Miss T. says I told
the lady was dressed in white or light blue. I said in reality only " light,"
as I do not see colours generally, and the whole dress seemed indeed
whitish.

(2) The lady [is] reported to have stayed in her " dressing " room. Now
there are no dressing-rooms (in the English sense of the word) as a rule in
Russian houses, but boudoirs. When I saw her dressing, the room seemed
half -lighted, rather dark ; afterwards it was lighted well and the walls looked
brighter, so I took it to be another room.

You may notice too that between my and Miss Klado's account and this
one nearly a month elapsed, so that details are now, of course, less distinctly
remembered. You are quite right that one should write it down im-
mediately. . . . N. GERNET.

CASES.

G. Collective Apparition.

In Phantasms of the Living, Vol. II., p. 208, is published a case
(No. 325) of an apparition seen collectively by two persons. About
this case some additional evidence has recently been obtained which
seems worth printing here. For the convenience of the reader, we
reprint first the original account, as given in Phantasms of the Living.

MAY, iH97.] Cases. 75

Captain Cecil Norton wrote as follows : —

5, Queen's Gate, S.W., December 20th, 1885.

About Christmas time, 1875 or 1876, being officer on duty, I was seated
at the mess table of the 5th Lancers, in the West Cavalry Barracks at
Aldershot. There were 10 or 12 other officers present, and amongst them
Mr. John Atkinson (now of Erchfont Manor, near Devizes, Wilts.), the
Surgeon-Major of the regiment, who sat on my right, but at the end of the
table furthest from me and next to Mr. Russell. [Captain Norton was
sitting at the end of the table and directly facing the window.] At about
8.45 p.m. Atkinson suddenly glared at the window to his right, thereby
attracting the notice of Russell, who, seizing his arm, said, " Good gracious,
Doctor, what's the matter with you?" This caused me to look in the
direction in which I saw Atkinson looking, viz., at the window opposite,
and I there saw (for the curtains were looped up, although the room was
lighted by a powerful central gas light in the roof and by candles on the
table) a young woman, in what appeared a soiled or somewhat worn bridal
dress, walk or glide slowly past the window from east to west. She was
about at the centre of the window when I observed her, and outside the
window. No person could have actually been in the position where she
appeared, as the window in question is about 30 feet above the ground.

The nearest buildings to the window referred to are the Infantry Barracks
opposite, about 300 yards distant. Behind where I sat is a conservatory,
which was examined by me, as well as the front window, immediately after
the occurrence. There was no person in the conservatory. [It was unused
in the winter.] The nearest buildings to it are the officers' stables, over
which are the staff sergeants' quarters, about 50 yards distant.

The occurrence made little if any impression upon me, though it impressed
others who were in the room. All present had been drinking very little
wine ; and the dinner had been very quiet.

It has just occurred to me that I may be wrong as to the time of year,
and that the occurrence may nave taken place about 15th October or about
loth March. CECIL NoRTON.

Mr. Atkinson wrote : —

Erchfont Manor, Devizes, August 31st, 1885.

The appearance of a woman which I saw pass the mess-room window at
Aldershot seemed to be outside, and it passed from east to west. The mess-
room is on the first floor, so the woman would have been walking in the air.
There has been a very nice story made out of it — like most other ghost-
stories, founded on an optical illusion.

Mr. Gurney added : —

Captain Norton's viva voce account made it tolerably clear, in my opinion,
that the case was one of hallucination, not illusion. He further mentions
that both Mr. Atkinson and he were ' ' satisfied that the face and form of the
woman seen were familiar," though they could not at the moment identify
the person. Captain Norton afterwards felt sure that the likeness was to
a photograph which he was in the habit of seeing in the room of the

76 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1897.

veterinary surgeon of the regiment, representing the surgeon's deceased wife
in bridal dress. Oddly enough, this man was at the time, unknown to his
friends, actually dying, or within a day or two of death, in the same building.
But Mr. Atkinson recalls nothing about the photograph ; and the
coincidence is not one to which we can attach weight.

We have now obtained from two of the officers who were present
at the time their recollections of the incident. One of them, Lieut.
Beaumont, in answer to a written request for his recollection of the
alleged apparition in the 5th Lancers' mess-room at Aldershot,
writes : —

Hillside, Burgess Hill, Sussex, March 10M, 1897.

I well remember the incident you refer to, and shall be pleased to tell
you the circumstances as I recollect them.

It must have been in 1876, and in October, I fancy. It so happened
that on the night in question that there were very few officers present at the
mess dinner — so far as I can recollect only Norton, E. the veterinary
surgeon, Dr. Atkinson and myself, who, being orderly officer, sat at the
end of the table. It was, I think, towards the close of the dinner, the
servants having retired and we were smoking and chatting, when I was
much struck with the expression on the faces of my brother officers,
who appeared to be gazing in amazement at something behind me. At
first, I thought it was some joke, but they each of them seriously described
what they had seen, viz., a figure of a woman in white, who passed silently
through the room, coming, as it were, from the ante-room and going behind
me through the door opposite. It was impossible to doubt, from their faces
at the time, that there was something extraordinary happening. I afterwards
asked them seriously about it, and Surgeon- Major Atkinson, who was a long
way the senior, and a hard-headed man, assured me that he had certainly
seen the apparition, and he seemed much impressed. The others were equally
confident, and assured me there was no chaff about it. It was frequently
alluded to afterwards in a joking way, but I believe that all those present
thought it " uncanny."

I must tell you that none of us had imbibed more than a glass or two of
claret, and it was a most exceptionally quiet evening at mess.

I think E. died not long after.

I did hear that the incident had been related in some story in a magazine,
but I never saw it, and I cannot say that I have ever allowed myself to
attach any great importance to it. MONTMORENCY BEAUMONT.

This letter having been shown to Captain Norton, he wrote that
Lieutenant Beaumont was mistaken in supposing that Mr. E. was
present on the occasion. He also sent us a sketch (reproduced below)
of the position of the officers, which agrees with his own earlier
account, but not with the present recollections of Lieutenant Beaumont.
The discrepancy, however, is of comparatively slight importance.

MAY, 1897.]

Cases.

In answer to a further letter asking whether he felt sure about
the persons at mess and particularly as to the presence of Veterinary
Surgeon E. at mess that night, Lieut. Beaumont writes : —

March llth, 1897.

After such a lapse of time, I may be in error as to the presence of E.
on that evening when the apparition was seen. 1 should, however, have
said that he was present. I can be quite sure as to Atkinson and
Norton. It occurred to me when writing to you that my great friend, Fred
Russell, was also present, but of this I did not feel sure and said nothing to
you.

I give you here, as far as I can trust my memory, what I believe was
the real position of the officers. [Sketch enclosed.] You will observe that
I place the window behind me. Now I feel confident that I was sitting
at the end of the table, and almos* equally confident that Russell was at
the other end — therefore, either he or I was the orderly officer of the day.

I certainly may have misunderstood what exactly happened as to the
movement of tho apparition ; it may have been by the window or outside —
but, in any case, to have been behind me, I must have been sitting as I
describe.

MONTMORENCY BBAUMONT.

fctOT?'

Entrance —
door.

tkinson.

X Norton.

mont.

Service
_ door.

X
Beau

Russell.

Windows.

— >• Shows direction of passage of apparition.
Sketch of positions by Capt. Norton.

78 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, isw.

The second officer whoso testimony has been obtained, Lieutenant
Colonel Williams, writes : —

Rockfields, Hereford, March 8th, 1897.

I am afraid I can give you very little information on the subject ;
it is so many years since the affair took place that I have nearly for-
gotten all about it. All that I remember is that one night when we were
a very small party at mess, some time during the dinner, I think just before
beginning dessert, I noticed Dr. Atkinson looking in rather a peculiar way
at the window at the top of the room, and I think my brother-in-law
[Captain Norton] said to him or he said to Captain Norton "did you see it 1 "
There was some little joking about it at the time, and on asking my brother-
in-law after dinner what he really had seen, he told me that he had seen a
lady in a white dress and dark hair cross the window on the outside.

HUGH P. WILLIAMS.

Mrs. Atkinson, the widow of Surgeon-Major Atkinson, in answer
to a letter asking if her late husband had ever spoken to her on the
subject of the apparition at the mess table of the 5th Lancers at
Aldershot, writes : —

Erchfont Manor, Devizes, March llth, [1897].

It is quite true that my husband saw the appearance at Aldershot in
1877; he often told me about it. They were in the North Cavalry barracks
[Captain Norton states that there were no North Cavalry barracks at
Aldershot, but that it was in the West Cavalry Barracks] at Aldershot, and
were at mess in the mess-room, which is on the first floor, a great distance
from the ground. There is no balcony outside or even a ledge (I believe).
My husband and Captain Norton were the only two sitting facing the window,
when they saw the figure of a woman go slowly by. They were much
astonished and told the others, and there was much excitement about it.
Shortly after the Veterinary Surgeon died, and on going through his papers
either my husband or Captain Norton found the photograph of the woman
they had seen from the mess-room window. I think they both recognised
it. It was not known that the Veterinary Surgeon was married. The
appearance was never in any way explained. M A ATKINSON.

A tablet in All Saints' Church, Aldershot, gives the date of death
of Mr. E., veterinary surgeon, 5th Lancers, as January 3rd, 1876.
This shows that the date when the apparition was seen was probably
about Christmas time, 1875, as both Lieutenant Beaumont and Mrs.
Atkinson confirm Captain Norton's impression that the incident
occurred shortly before Mr. E. died.

L. 1088. Thought-transference.

The following instances of apparent thought-transference occurring
spontaneously were sent to us by the Hon. Kathleen Ward, an
Associate of the Society. We may point out that the occurrence of

MAY, 1897.] Coses. 79

M-veral such instances in the experience of the same person obviously
lessens the probability that the coincidences were due merely to chance.

Miss Ward writes : —

84, Sloane Street, S.W., April 22nd, 1897.

(I).

Two years ago, on awaking one morning at 8 o'clock, I saw a distinct
appearance of my sister Emily, seated at the foot of my bed in her night-
gown. She was rocking herself backwards and forwards as if in pain.
Putting out my hand to touch her, the phantasm vanished. Going into my
sister's room half an hour later, I related to her my experience, and she
(being still in much pain) informed me that at 8 o'clock she had actually been
in the position above described, on her oicn bed. and had meditated coming
into my room, but had not liked to disturb me ; (she had been perfectly well
the night before). My sister's room is at some distance from mine, being
divided therefrom by a corridor and cross-door. KATHLEEN WARD

EMILY G. WARD.
(II).

In the summer of 1890, my sister Emily went with my father to a large
Orange demonstration held at Ballykilbeg, on the 12th of July, a drive of some
nine miles from our house. On her return in the evening she mentioned
having seen our new member there (Dr. Rentoul, Member for East Down).
" What kind of man is he?" Tasked. "Well," she said, "he's exactly
like some one I've seen somewhere lately, but who it is I cannot remember, it
has been puzzling me all the way home." That night I had rather a vivid
dream, in which I appeared to be driving the said Dr. Rentoul in my little
pony cart through Downpatrick. Dr. R. was dressed as a jester, with cap and
bells complete. In my dream this seemed to me perfectly natural. Next
morning I at once repaired to my sister's room, and related to her the dream.
She exclaimed directly, " That's who he's like — Rigoletto, the jester — whom
I saw lately at the opera ! " I should add that / have never seen either
"Rigoletto" or Dr. Rentoul !

KATHLEEN WARD.

I testify to the accuracy of the above statement.

EMILY G. WARD.

A somewhat earlier account of this incident, written by Miss
Ward in April, 1896, is in our possession, and is almost identical with
that printed aboTe. In this account, Miss Ward says : —

For my part, I had never seen the opera, nor had my sister ever
commented on the appearance of any of the actors therein.

(HI).

On the 12th of February, this year, my sister and I were driving together.
In the course of conversation, I mentioned an absurd dream I had had the
preceding night, in which I appeared to have been in possession of a bicycle
made of pure gold, studded with rubies and diamonds. " That is most

80 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1897.

extraordinary ! " exclaimed my sister ; "for in bed last night I was reading
a silly story which came out in this month's Cyclists' Touring Club Gazette,
about a rider who owned a bicycle as dazzling as the one in your dream !" 1
must mention that I had not seen that particular number of the Gazette, or
indeed any other, as I do not belong to the club in question.

KATHLEEN WARD.
(IV).

On the 20th of last month, my sister Emily was lunching with Mrs.
Maude. In conversation they got upon psychical subjects, and my sister
related some of the experiences given above. After lunch Mrs. Maude
suggested a game of "Patience," the particular one fixed upon being known
to us as " Demon Thirteen. " In wishing my sister good-bye, Mrs. Maude
said, ' ' Now ask your sister what we did directly after lunch, and see whether
she can tell us." Later on my sister met me at another house. She at once
asked me Mrs. Maude's question. In a moment the vision of these two
bending over the cards, came before me, and I said, " Playing Patience."
" And which game ? " pursued my sister. (We know and play at least twenty
varieties). "Demon Thirteen," was my answer. I should add, that my
sister had never happened before to play "Patience" at that particular
hour. I shall send this to Mrs. Maude, asking her kindly to append her
signature, stating that above is correct.

KATHLEEN WARD.

The following note is appended : —

I can vouch for the correctness of above.

JENNY MAUDE.

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

SIR, — I have had two curious dreams lately, in each of which I have been
roused from sound sleep by imaginary sounds. We know that the senses
are lulled, not sealed, in sleep, and that real noises often modify our
dreams, sometimes awakening us. But these noises were purely imaginary —
my dreams were in the dead of night when the house and vicinity were as
silent as the tomb. I always awake before being called by my maid at 7.30,
and know her footsteps well, of course. In dream No. 1, I heard her steps
plainly, and dreaming it was morning and the usual hour for rising, I awoke
with a start. In dream No. 2, I heard the front door bell ring and instantly
connected it with the expected visit of a cab proprietor who lives near, in
this case also awakening at once. He has not yet come as I expected. I am
sure the sounds were non-existent, and imaginary, but, if so, how could I
have been roused from sound sleep by them ? Were they auditory hallucina-
tions of the Soul or Ego ? -p jj DOVETON.

EastclifFe, Babbacombe.

[Actual physical effects of many difierents kinds are produced by dreams,
and the particular one described seems to be not uncommon in the
experience of many persons. — ED.]

No. CXL.-VoL. VIIL JUNE, 18!>7.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Member and Associates 81

Meeting of the Council 82

General Meeting 82

Charles Alexander Lockhart Robertson 87

Supernormal Phenomena observed during Hypnotic Treatment. By Professor A.

Alexander 88

Supplementary Report of Discussion 95.

Correspondence 9ft

NEW MEMBER AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

BILLINGS, DR. J. S., Librarian, New York Public Library, New York.

CARXEGIE, LADY HELENA, Kinnaird Castle, Brechin, N.B.

CURRIE, MRS., Warders, Tonbridge, Kent.

ERMEN, WALTER F. A., Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

GOVETT, F. MOLYNEUX, Veytaux, Canton de Vaud, Switzerland.

GRUNBAUM, O. F. F., B.A., B.Sc., Trinity College, Cambridge.

McLachlan, David B., Grosvenor House, Ridgway, Wimbledon.

RAMSDEN, Miss, Bulstrode, Gerrard's Cross, Bucks.

RENSBURG, Miss NETTA L., 37, Croxteth-road, Sefton Park, Liverpool.

SANDERSON, J. MURRAY, B.A., London Hospital, London, E.

SCULL, MRS., The Pines, 2, Langland-gardens, Hampstead, N.W.

SWEENEY, HUBERT J. P., 17, Quay-street, Sligo.

WELCH, CHARLES, F.S.A., Librarian, Guildhall Library, London, E.C.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

BOYD, MRS. ELLA F., Hyde Park, Mass.

BRUGUIERE, EMILE A., JUNR., 1,800, Franklin-st., San Francisco, Cal.

82 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNK, 18!»7.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held on May 28th at the Town
Hall, Westminster. Mr. T. Barkworth was voted to the chair. There
were also present, Sir A. K. Stephenson, Dr. G. P. Rogers, Dr. C. L.
Tuckey, Dr. A. Wallace, Mr. St. George Lane Fox and Mr. F. W. H.
Myers.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed as correct.

One new Member arid twelve new Associates, whose names and
addresses are given above, were elected. The election of two new
Associates of the American Branch was recorded.

The Council recorded with regret the death of Dr. Charles Alex-
ander Lockhart Robertson, who was an original member of the Society
and of the Council. The Council also recorded with regret the death
of the Rev. Canon Wood, of Newent, Gloucestershire, who had taken
much interest in the work of the Society.

A letter was read from Professor Sidgwick, resigning the Editor-
ship of the Proceedings and Journal, and explaining at the same time
that this withdrawal was not due to any loss of interest in the work
of the Society.

The Council accepted the resignation with thanks to Professor
Sidgwick for his long-continued services : and Dr. Richard Hodgson
was appointed as Editor of the Proceedings and Journal, his duties
to commence on his return from America in the latter part of the
summer. In the mean time the Part of the Proceedings now passing
through the press, and the July Journal, will be brought out under
the management of Professor Sidgwick.

It was resolved on various grounds that no General Meeting should
be held in July ; but that the Meetings should be resumed at the usual
time in the autumn.

It was agreed that, if found to be needful, a meeting of the
Council should be summoned early in July to transact any necessary
business.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 87th General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, May 28bh, at 4 p.m. ; Mr. St. George
Lane Fox in the chair.

JUNK, isii? | General Meet-in ;/.

Mi;. F. \V. II. .MVKKS gave an address on "The Moral and Intel-
lectual Limits of Suggestion," of part of which the following is an
abstract : —

The successes of hypnotic suggestion and of self-suggestion are
being daily pushed further, and it becomes increasingly important to
form some conception of their possible range or necessary limit. Much
that hypnotists had hardly ventured to anticipate has been recently
attained ; while 011 the other hand it seems desirable that anticipation
should be pushed as far as reason allows, — being itself an important
factor in the production of the desired effect. I wish, then, to deal
with the highest or most advanced results of suggestion. Adopting Dr.
Hughlings-Jackson's scheme of centres at three levels of evolution, I
may endeavour to select and review the effects produced upon highest-
level centres, those which we imagine as governing moral and intel-
lectual manifestations. There is, of course, no definite line to be
•drawn between these results and results merely somatic or physiological.
The changes of all kinds occur in interconnection, and are set in action
by the same forms of suggestion. We may, however, roughly say that
the effects which we attempt to compass by education will correspond to
•changes of highest-level centres, and may be regarded as defining the
range of morality and intellect.

Our educative efforts are partly inhibitive and partly dynamogenic ;
that is to say, we endeavour to check some impulses, and to stimulate
and strengthen others. All inhibitive education seems capable of being
-assisted by suggestion. Thus, our first effort is to teach the child
to control tricks and tics ; — sucking thumb, biting nails, stammering,
•echolalia, etc. Similarly in need of restraint are manifestations of
ill-temper, violence, etc., with other impulsive tendencies which arise at
a later stage of development. Then in adult life we find the craving
for stimulants and narcotics ; — tobacco, alcohol, cooaine, morphia. In
«ach of these classes of cases hypnotic suggestion has often succeeded
when all other means have failed.

In the intellectual field also strong inhibition is needed throughout
life, and has often been greatly helped by suggestion. There is no
evidence that suggestion can much expand the range of native intelli-
gence, so as to make a Newton of an ordinary man. But it can concen-
trate attention, either below or above the conscious threshold ; — below,
as in Dr. Bramwell's cases of post-hypnotic computation of the date
when a suggestion falls due ; above, as in Liebeault's now classical
schoolboy, and similar cases. The occasional solution of baffling
mathematical problems in sleep is encouraging in this direction ; since
what spontaneous somnambulism can do it is likely that hypnotic

84 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNK, 1897.

suggestion can do also. More experiments in this direction are much
to be desired.

Passing on to definitely moral education, we endeavour to foster
both the self-regarding and the altruistic virtues. Self-regarding
virtue consists largely in the forms of self-control already mentioned ;
but also in the more active qualities of courage, confidence, prompti-
tude. These qualities hypnotic suggestion has often directly stimulated,
while it has still of tener fostered them by checking the " phobies " or
specific morbid fears which form a paralysing ingredient in many
minds. The altruistic virtues, again, rest largely on the same basis
of self-control as the self-regarding. When we hear, for instance,
of a patient raised by hypnotic suggestion from " moral insanity " to-
much-valued helpfulness as a hospital nurse, we need not assume that
she has attained any high pitch of self-devotion. There is a kind of
ethical "position of stability" in the civilised world which implies-
adequate good sense and good will to others, but no heroic virtue.
Up to this point, as it seems, even very rough and low natures can
sometimes be carried. It is not likely, on the other hand, that the
hypnotising physician will often be called upon to give to the hard
successful worldling a " heart of flesh," or to add a new grace to the
character of the saint. Yet in these directions, also — throughout all
the range of human character — sudden and permanent changes for the
better do frequently occur. Conversions — which may, of course, be
conversions to any religion or to any philosophy — afford a series
strikingly parallel to our series of cures by suggestion. When sudden, —
as at revival meetings and the like, — they are often accompanied with
a profound trancelike sleep. These sudden conversions, I may add,
are often quite as permanent and profound as those which follow upon
long-continued brooding or suasion.

But if it be true that conversion and suggestion are sometimes
almost equivalent expressions for a change which seems profounder
than the changes which mere reasoning inspires, this is not to say that
the origin of either lies in some mere physiological trick or fortunate
self-delusion. I believe that there is here a true dynamogeny, implying
what must in some sense be an intensification of vitality. This — as I
conjecture — comes in the last resort from a world of life, — a metetherial
environment, — some condition of things more fundamental and primary
than the interstellar ether itself. In this energy, however defined or
personalised, we live and move and have our being. Hence comes the
vitalising or informing principle, which is nearer to its source, and can
deal with the body more freely in its subliminal than in its supra-
liminal relations, — can modify it more effectively in trance-states than

.'i NK, is;):.] General Meeting. 85

in waking hours. The occasional coincidence in trance of telsesthesia
with somatic plasticity might be thus explained. The body (we might
say) can then be more easily modified, and also the soul or informing
principle can be more nearly detached. If, however, hypotheses like
tln'se are to have any value, they should be to some extent capable of
corroboration by actual experiment. Self-suggestion, in fact, ought to
be possible to an extent hitherto only realised by certain isolated
historical groups, — Buddhist, Stoic, or Christian. This is the direc-
tion in which effort should now be made ; and if success is anywhere
thought to have been attained, that success should be tested and
recorded with the care and candour which such results, in such an age
as our own, at once deserve and require.

DR. C. LLOYD TUCK BY related some of his experiences as practical
illustrations of the points raised by Mr. Myers. He had seen hypno-
tism cure cases of kleptomania and other morbid conditions dependent
on degeneration, which were not amenable to ordinary medical treat-
ment. He especially instanced the case of a girl of thirteen, who
used to cut up her own and her mother's new clothes from morbid love
•of mischief. Argument, entreaty, and punishment had been tried in
vain for eight years, but the child was speedily cured by suggestion.
Referring to the cure of alcoholism and other excesses by hypnotism,
Dr. Tuckey found that the patient's co-operation was essential to
success, and in support of this he quoted the case of an artist who was
addicted to drink and to excessive cigarette smoking. He was very
anxious to be cured of the former, but had mental reservations in regard
to the smoking. He was cured without difficulty of all inclination for
alcohol, but it took a long time and much argument to induce him to
forego tobacco.

One patient, a very alcoholised woman, who remained cured after
treatment for two years and then relapsed, on several occasions dreamt
that she was drinking and woke up with the parched tongue, nausea
and malaise, characteristic after-symptoms of excess, thus demon-
strating the similarity of effects produced by material and psychical
•causes.

In regard to stimulating the intellect and developing mental con-
centration, Dr. Tuckey had seen this result attained in some cases,
and he referred to the well known cases reported by Mr. Hugh
Wingfield, who, when at Cambridge, had by hypnotic suggestion made
a clever but idle undergraduate settle down to work and pass a
brilliant examination. Therefore, though Mr. Myers was no doubt
I'ight in supposing that one could not by means of suggestion make a
Sir Isaac Newton out of an ordinary intellect, yet one could develop

86 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNE, 1897.

talents which were latent and foster good qualities which were over-
borne by evil tendencies, so that there was probably a great future for
the judicious use of hypnotism as an educational agent when the time
which Mr. Myers foresaw arrived.

DR. J. MILNE BRAMWELL said that Mr. Myers had invited those
who practised hypnotism to give some account of their experiences ;
but, as the audience was not a medical one, he preferred to refer to the
observations he had made at home and abroad, rather than to relate
the details of personal cases.

Dr. Bramwell could confirm Mr. Myers' statements in reference
to the value of suggestion in disease. The cure of the drug and
alcohol habit especially illustrated this, many cases of long-standing
dipsomania having remained well for years after hypnotic treatment.
In various forms of obsession also it was strikingly useful ; fears and
morbid ideas, which had rendered the patient's life a burden, frequently
disappeared.

In his earlier paper Mr. Myers had suggested that the inspirations-
of genius were frequently an uprush from the subliminal consciousness,
and of this Dr. Bramwell knew an interesting example. This was-
discovered accidentally during an attempt to learn something of the
hypnotic state by questioning a subject during hypnosis. She
described her mental condition, when suggestions were not made to-
her, as one of tranquillity, and asserted that she rarely spontaneously
thought of anything. On one occasion, however, in hypnosis she
designed a dress, a problem which she had vainly attempted to solve
in the waking state. On awaking she remembered nothing of this,
but about an hour later the design suddenly flashed into her mind,
and she carried it out successfully. She was entirely ignorant of the
origin of her inspiration in the waking state ; but now, when again
hypnotised, was able to recall that this had arisen in a former
hypnosis. If one, were able to hypnotise a man of genius, question-
ing during hypnosis might possibly throw some light upon the
subliminal origin of his inspirations.

Dr. Bramwell was glad that Mr. Myers had referred to the diffi-
culty sometimes encountered in the induction of hypnosis. Many
people believed that it was an operation which could be performed with
certainty at the first attempt, and expected that their intellectual,,
moral and physical nature could be completely changed in a few
minutes. The production of hypnosis, as the result of post-hypnotic-
suggestion, had also been misunderstood. Strangers at a distance
sometimes asked for a written order to enable them to send themselves
or their friends to sleep. Hypnosis could sometimes be induced at the

1KH7.J (•Inn-It^ Alexander Luckltart Robertmm. 87

first attempt and occasionally curative results followed with almost
miraculous rapidity ; but as a rule tho time and trouble required bore a
direct proportion to the severity and duration of the disease and the
inriital instability of the patient. In conclusion, Dr. Bramwell
\\.iiinly acknowledged the services that Mr. Myers had rendered
to hypnotism.

CHARLES ALEXANDER LOCK HART ROBERTSON.

Our Society has suffered a serious loss through the death, on the
18th ult., of the distinguished medico-psychological physician, Dr.
Lockhart Robertson, who has for many years been a member of its
Council. He studied medicine first at Edinburgh and St. Andrews ;
and then, after five years spent in the Army Medical Service, he
entered on a fresh course of medical study at Cambridge, where he
took the degree of M.D. After this he commenced practice in
London, devoting — with characteristic energy-— the time that he could
spare from his profession to the work of the Medico-psychological
Association ; of which he was for some years Honorary Secretary,
afterwards becoming joint Editor with Dr. Maudsley of its journal —
the Journal of Mental Science. After filling most successfully the
post of Medical Superintendent of the Hay wards Heath Lunatic
Asylum, he was appointed, in 1870, Chancery Visitor in Lunacy ;
which appointment he only resigned in January of last year, at the
age of 70. He was a man of very active mind, who wrote much on
subjects connected with the treatment of the insane, and showed an
ever-fresh interest in new ideas and facts, and improvements of
method. He was thoroughly fearless in the expression of his con-
victions ; and long before the foundation of the S.P.R., having turned
his attention to the phenomena of Spiritualism, he had publicly
declared his opinion that the evidence for those phenomena was too
strong to be rejected. He accordingly welcomed the formation of our
Society, of which he was one of the original members, being also
on the Council from the beginning ; and he never ceased to take a
keen interest in our work. No member of our Council was a more
assiduous reader of the proofs forwarded to him of articles in the
Proceedings ; and I have received from him many letters relative to
these articles, sometimes simply approving, sometimes containing
criticisms or warnings, but all testifying to his eager sympathy with
our inquiries and his resolute independence of judgment. The loss of
so distinguished an alienist makes a gap in our ranks that it will be

88 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNE, 1897.

difficult to fill : and no one who knew him in private life can fail
to miss him as a friend, since he was one of those rare beings who
seem privileged to maintain, in spite of the advance of years, a
perennial youthfulness of heart and mind. — ED.

SUPERNORMAL PHENOMENA OBSERVED DURING
HYPNOTIC TREATMENT BY DR. ALFREDO BARCELLOS,
OF RIO DE JANEIRO.

Communicated to the Society for Psychical Eesearck by their Corresponding

Member in Brazil,

PROFESSOR A. ALEXANDER.

INTRODUCTION.

The Joiwnal for July, 1893, contains a case of thought-transference
obtained through table-tilting (M. 56), to which one of the principal
witnesses is Dr. Alfredo Barcellos, of Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro. He
is therein described as a student of hypnotism ; but it must now be
added that in the treatment of patients he has applied hypnotic pro-
cesses with much therapeutic success, and that in so doing he has met
from time to time with spontaneous phenomena of considerable
interest to psychical students. After some delay, I have succeeded in
obtaining the evidence for these supernormal occurrences, which is
here presented. My informants in the following cases are all reliable,
and with regard to Dr. Barcellos himself, I can specially recommend
him to confidence as an intelligent and trustworthy narrator of the
facts of his experience. As, however, his object has always been the
cure of disease, and not experimentation, he has in general omitted to
take written notes of his observations. It is, therefore, important to
premise that his memory is decidedly a faithful one ; that it was much
impressed by the occurrences witnessed, and that, in his references to
facts observed by both of us, I have noticed no tendency on his part
to exaggeration. This much to be regretted omission renders all the
more necessary the corroborative statements made by other persons
who were directly or indirectly concerned as witnesses in the cases
given.

In 1888, the doctor, having contracted symptoms of beriberi, placed
himself for treatment in the hands of a colleague, and was himself
hypnotised. He was very susceptible to influence, so that the curative
suggestions of the operator produced the desired results. He describes

JCNK, i8'»;.i Supernormal Phenomena. H9

the state into which he fell as similar to that of the drowsiness that
precedes natural sleep. He felt himself controlled. Vague ideas and
unfocussed desires floated in the field of consciousness (poly-ideism) ;
but there was almost no power of fixation, nor could his desires attain
to the force of volitions and pass into motor effects. Thus he ex-
perienced an inability to speak, and much wished that the hypriotiser
would order him to do so. By a command of the latter his attention
could be at once concentrated on any given point ; yet he noticed that
in regard to the suggestions made he retained a power of discrimination
.and choice, and could signify by nodding his consent to those that
fieemed the best adapted to his needs. This sign of approval he has
since frequently observed in his own patients. On the other hand, he
concludes from his personal experience, both as subject and operator,
that a suggestion will not take effect if it be really opposed to the will
of the patient, whose frown, accompanied perhaps with a lateral move-
ment of the head, will indicate repugnance or decided rejection. The
insight thus gained into the real nature of the hypnotic psychosis
leads him to deny the existence of a truly mono-ideic state, and makes
him insist on the importance of enabling the patient to speak and
reply freely to questions during hypnosis. In these conclusions,
independently arrived at, he is in complete accordance with Dr.
Brain well.

It is now recognised that the mental attitude of the hypnotiser,
jind his consequent method of training his subjects, determine largely
the form of hypnosis induced. Were the matter any longer a debat-
.nble one, some proof of such personal influence might be gathered even
from hypnotic practice in Rio de Janeiro. One of our doctors (now
deceased) was accustomed to obtain in his patients little more than the
lethargic sleep with, perhaps, slight cataleptic phenomena ; Drs. Erico
Coelho and Fajardo, of this city, train their subjects in suggestive
•catalepsy ; another practitioner has reproduced in those hypnotised by
him the three stages observed in the Salpetriere, while Dr. Barcellos'
patients are mainly characterised by a tendency to pass into the alert
•or somnambulic state.*

It does not seem, however, to be so readily admitted that the
•development of supernormal faculties during hypnosis in certain
•exceptional cases may be favoured, or hindered, by belief or disbelief
in the possibility of their occurrence. Yet in view of the close mental
rcpport which is presumably established between the operator and a

*In a footnote to his paper on "Hypnotism and Telepathy" (Part XII of
Proceeding f, p. 242), Mr. Gurney speaks of the " readiness with which what may be
•called hypnotic fashions are established."

90 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNK, 181)7.-

sensitive subject, it may be surmised that some subtle influence (which
from a physical analogy might be called catalytic) is really exercised
by the former, whose mental bias furnishes, or withholds, the
necessary conditions. The fact that Dr. Bernheim hypnotised over
10,000 patients without meeting with a single occurrence contrary to-
the conceptions of orthodox science, stands in marked contrast with
the experience of such competent observers as Professor Charles
Richet, Drs. Ochorowicz, Gibert, and others.* In a much more
limited sphere, and in a more perfunctory manner, several of our Rio'
hypnotists have satisfied themselves of the reality of certain clair-
voyant and telepathic extensions of the hypnotic trance. It is true
that Brazilian subjects are, in general, highly suggestible and sometimes
highly sensitive in other ways ; but this alone would not, perhaps, be
sufficient to evoke the rarer hypnotic phenomena, did there not exist
in the Brazilian operator a latent desire to witness them.

In Dr. Barcellos' case, there was certainly no parti pris that might
act as an obstacle ; therefore it may be supposed that, while attending,
strictly to the necessities of a curative treatment, he left ajar the
door by which such marvels find an entrance. The possibility
of telephenomena had been already proved to him by a case of
clairvoyance that had fallen under his notice before his attention was-
drawn to hypnotism. f Thus it happens that he has had in his
clientele two patients whose lucidity was developed to a remarkable
degree, namely, (1) the subject E., a young lady of 17, who, when the
doctor was first called to attend her, was suffering from the most
acute form of hysteria ((/rand hysteric), and (2) Donna G. de M.

(I-)

The supernormal powers of E. were not in general so well observed1
during the period of her treatment in 1891-3 as to render possible any

* In summing up the results of his hypnotic experience, Dr. Bernheim asks, " Du
merveilleux, tel que la lucidite1, la provision de 1'aveiiir, la vision interieure, la vision
a distance ou a travers des corps opaques, 1'instinct des remedes, est-il besoin de dire
que je n'en ai pas vu ? "

t This occurred in 1883, at Cantagallo, in the (then) Province of Rio. The doctor
was attending a black patient, the slave of a certain Donna Marianna Py. One
morning the sick man, while labouring under the delirium of typhoid fever, declared
that Donna Marianna's son, Augusto, was rolling down a hill in a bullock cart. At
12 o'clock Senhor Augusto Py arrived at his mother's house (he lived at half-a-league's-
distance), and on enquiry, it was found that the accident had really happened to him,
not only in the manner described by the deliiious man, but also at the very hour of
the apparent vision. Dr. Barcellos was not actually present on the occasion, but h&
was told of the circumstance on the same day by persons of the family.

.i< NK, isnr.j Supernormal Phenomena. 91

but a cursory mention of the alleged instances of their manifestation.
E., however, has lately been hypnotised at a distance with apparent
success. One night in June, 1890, her father, General Carlos de
Aranjo, called on Dr. Barcellos. In consequence of the shock
occasioned by a death in the family, the girl was again suffering from
violent hysterical attacks. He had coine to town to make arrange-
ments for the funeral and to request the doctor to visit her. These
were the circumstances that led to the experiment, which was made
with the idea of affording immediate relief to the sufferer. An
account of this was dictated to me by Dr. Barcellos on the following
evening.

June 23/W, 1896.

On Monday, the 22nd of June, 1890, at nearly 10 o'clock p.m., there
appeared at my house General Carlos de Aranjo, the Director of the Asylo
<l<>s IiwalidoH da Patria on the island of Bom Jesus. He told me that his
little grandson had died on that day, and that his daughter E., who was some
time ago under my hypnotic treatment, was suffering from formidable
hysterical attacks. He expressed a desire that I should go thither and calm
her by the usual hypnotic processes. As it was late, and as I felt myself
much fatigued, I told him that it was impossible to undertake the journey at
that hour, but that I would go the next day in the early morning. I would,
however, compensate for my absence by transmitting to her, from where I
was in Botafogo, a [mental] order to sleep and to recover during sleep her
calmness and tranquillity. Moreover, I gave him a letter containing the
same suggestions, in my own handwriting, and this was to be handed to her
for perusal in case she were in a condition to read it. If, however, she were
still hysterical and unable to read, he was to make use of the letter by
applying it to her forehead and making passes with it ; — all this to provide
against the possible failure of the attempt at hypnotisation at a distance
which I was about to make. Taking out my watch, I showed General Carlos
de Aranjo that it was ten minutes past ten, and [I requested him] to make
careful enquiry on arriving at the island whether the time at which E. had
there fallen into a calm and deep sleep coincided, or not, with the hour then
noted for the commencement of my experiment. As the General was taking
leave, I gave him every hope of a successful result, for I recollected that on
another occasion there had been some proof of telepathic communication
between my patient and me, the [intervening] distance being the same.

The General having withdrawn after this verification of the time, I
entered the drawing-room, which was dark and unoccupied, and shut myself
in, having first informed my mother-in-law, Donna Joanna Azambuja, of my
intention, and requested her to prevent any noise or movement that might
disturb the attempt which I was about to make. I sat down on a chair with
my forehead clasped between my hands ; I concentrated my thoughts
intensely, imagining myself setting out for the Island of Bom Jesus, and
getting at that moment into the street-car. After I had passed in mental
review the places [to be met with] on the journey, I pictured my arrival in

92 Jourruil of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNE, 1897.

the presence of my patient, and having evoked a vivid image of her in my
memory, I made suggestions for about the space of a quarter of a hour to the
effect that she should sleep and become calm and tranquil. My fixation was
so intense that I finally experienced a sensation of exhaustion in the arms
{esvaecimento nos braqos). I arrived at the conviction that the suggestion had
been successful.

On the morning of the following clay I went to the island and had much
satisfaction in verifying that about twenty minutes past ten E. had fallen
into the hypnotic sleep, and had recovered the tranquillity of which she stood
in need.

[Signed] DR. ALFREDO BARCELLOS.

According to other notes taken at the period, Dr. Barcellos, on
returning that day from the island, went to a house of business in the
Saude,* and while waiting alons in a room, again endeavoured to
influence his patient by sending her a telepathic command to sleep.
He fixed his attention on this object at 1.55 p.m. — was interrupted
for a moment, and then willed the message strongly about 2 o'clock.
They afterwards informed him that at that hour E. looked more
than once at the clock, and began to console her bereaved sister in
accordance with a verbal suggestion given by Dr. Barcellos when he
was at the island. A certain oddness was noticeable in her behaviour;
but as hypnosis was not induced, this second experiment must be
considered a failure.

An allusion is made in Dr. Barcellos' account to a former instance
of telepathic communication between him and his patient. During
the first period of General Aranjo's residence on the island of Bom
Jesus his daughter had frequent accesses of spontaneous somnambulism.
The doctor was sent for. The journey from Botafogo to the island
being a long and inconvenient one, he proposed to E. that she should
in future lapse of her own accord into the hypnotic sleep, and should
then recall all the suggestions he had made to her. When asked how
many times it would be necessary that she should fall into this self-
induced hypnosis, she replied that three times would be sufficient. Dr.
Barcellos, therefore, directed her to retire to her room at 1 p.m. on
the three following days, promising on his part to concentrate his will
power on the proposed object at the same hour at Botafogo. On the
first two days, at the appointed time, he fixed his thoughts strongly on
E. ; on the third occasion, however, he forgot to do so, and was on his
way to the city in a street-car, when he casually glanced at the clock in
the Largo do Machado. It was 25 minutes past one ; he remembered
his agreement, and then and there made the promised volitional effort.

*A business part of the town on the water's edge.

.ii NK, i8i»7.J Superior UK i/ Phenomena. 93

Meanwhile E., in obedience to the command of her hypnotiser, went to
her room on the first and second day, and was self-hypnotised without
delay or difficulty ; but on the third, instead of yielding at once to-
hypnotic influence, she remained in a state of agitation for about
twenty minutes, after which she again fell into her self-induced
sleep.

No attempt was made to compare the clock in the Largo do-
Machado with the time at General Aranjo's house. The coincidence
is, nevertheless, sufficiently well verified to warrant the conjecture that
E. in her then sensitive condition did, in some obscure way, depend
directly on the volitional support afforded to her by the distant
operator.

It is interesting to note that on two or three occasions, when Dr.
Barcellos was present, and not making any special mental effort to-
influence her, E. failed to apprehend the meaning of his verbal
directions. Two such orders were thus misunderstood by her, with
curious results. One day, as a momentary repression of some undue
vivacity on her part, he told her " not to think." This was accepted
by her as a post-hypnotic suggestion, so that between that sitting and
the next she moved about like an automaton, answering no questions,
and giving no sign of intelligence. On being re-hypnotised and
interrogated as to the cause of her condition, she reminded the doctor
of his supposed command, and accused him of cruelty, asking him
whether he thought it possible that a human being could live without
thinking. On another occasion she was told to follow one of the
doctor's acquaintance clairvoyantly. This also was received by her as
a standing order, and for four days her mental vision seems to have
been constantly directed to this individual. No enquiry was ever
made to discover whether her description of his actions corresponded
to fact.

In concluding this presentation of Dr. Barcellos' statements relative
to this subject, I must give his assurance that the persons of her
family could readily distinguish between her hypnotic and her normal
sleep, and could always tell whether she was in a sleep-waking
condition or not.

In the afternoon of February 27th, 1897, I had an interview with
General Carlos de Aranjo at the island of Bom Jesus, and found him
very willing to furnish me with any information respecting the case
that it was in his power to give. Although he asserts that his
memory of the strange facts observed during the anxious period of his
daughter's illness is by no means perfect, yet his evidence, so far as it
goes, confirms that of Dr. Barcellos. Indeed, the further particulars-

94 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNK, ist»7.

given by him and by E.'s Jiance render the fact of hypnotisation at a
distance more probable than it would be if it stood alone.

With regard to the latter occurrence, the General affirms that he
did not tell his daughter of his intention, of calling on Dr. Barcellos on
the evening in question. It is quite true that E. fell asleep at the
time of the doctor's attempt to influence her telepathically. It is also
true that this sleep was not a natural one, which could hardly have
supervened in her then state of acute hysteria. On his arrival at the
island, he followed the instructions given him by the doctor ; that is,
his daughter having passed spontaneously into a trance, he made
passes with the letter which he had received at Botafogo. The result
was not satisfactory, inasmuch as the patient declared that, when
influenced in that manner, she found the effort to wake both painful
and exhausting. She begged, indeed, that such a process might never
again be employed.

Questioned as to the second attempt at telepathic hypnotisation on
the 23rd of June, 1896, General Aranjo also states that the hypnotic
sleep was not induced.

At the period preceding the removal of the family to the island of
Bom Jesus, and while they yet resided in the Rua da Passagem, E.,
who was then under regular treatment, seemed to be aware of Dr.
Barcellos' approach whenever he went by the house. She would rise
from her place and run to the window, where he was invariably found
to be passing, either on foot or in a street car. In this, according to
my informant, she was never once deceived.

A far better proof that some telepathic communication then existed
between the mind of E. and that of Dr. Barcellos is furnished by an
incident that occurred shortly before August 22nd, 1893, the date on
which I made a brief note of his account of it. The doctor had tried
to influence hypnotically a lady patient at a private asylum for the
insane (Casa de Saude do Dr. Eiras). His thoughts, it must be
remarked, had been indirectly occupied with E., for the success in her
case had induced him to make the experiment. It had, however,
been found necessary to administer chloroform, and in endeavouring to
rouse the patient from the effects of this anaesthetic he had patted her
cheek. This had taken place, more or less, at five o'clock in the after-
noon. About 9 p.m. on the same day E., who by normal means could
have had no knowledge of Dr. Barcellos' proceeding, awoke from sleep,
and saw some hallucinatory form standing by her and patting her
cheek.

The doctor no longer recalls the circumstances of the case ; but
.against his lapse of memory I must set my written note, and to this

NK, 1807.] Supplementary Report of Discussion. 95

I can now add General A ran jo's assurance that the incident occurred
as it is here related.

Besides the special rapport thus established with her hypnotiser,
this subject, it would seem, gave occasional indications that her super-
normal faculties could extend in other directions. General Aranjo
related to me on the same occasion of my visit that a certain Senhor V.,
known to him and his family, had moved away to Bahia. Little,
if any, correspondence had been kept up with him, and he had long
been absent from Rio, when E. one day exclaimed that he had killed a
man, but that he was not to blame, as it was a question of family
honour. News was afterwards received that Senhor V. had indeed
•committed homicide under the very provocation indicated by the
•clairvoyante.

These facts, witnessed in a member of his own household, made a
profound impression on rny informant, who was not before disposed to
believe in the possibility of their occurrence.

(To be continued.)

SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT OF DISCUSSION.

[The following report of some remarks made at the General
Meeting on April 23rd, was received too late for insertion in the
May Journal. — Ed.]

At the close of Mr. Myers' lecture, Mr. W. GORN-OLD stated that some
instances of "non-verbalised expressions of the subliminal self " to which
the lecturer referred, had come under his notice. He quoted one instance
which seemed to him in some measure allied to what are familiar to psychic
researchers as " automatic drawings." A lady, whose faculty for originating
plots for novels and dramas was somewhat remarkable, was in the habit
•of developing her ideas by an unconscious process of marginal scroll-work,
which often took very fantastic shapes. Sitting with pen in hand, the lady
would proceed to sketch out her subject. This would soon give way to
desultory markings and crude forms, which apparently had no relation to
the subject matter of her thought. Every such piece of scribbling would be
followed by a few pages of writing. At the end of the work the pages would
present the appearance of an ordinary manuscript with the addition of a
marginal scroll here and there, and sometimes a whole page of grotesque
scribbling. On one occasion which the speaker called to mind, the lady
had proceeded with a few lines of writing and had suddenly broken off
into a sketch something like the following illustration. [Sketch enclosed.]
When the work was finished it was found that the preliminary sketch
was a prognostic, in some sense, of the arrangement of the subject matter,
though, as in all such plot-weaving, the lady had no idea how the story

96 Journal of Sowuety for Psychical Research. [JUNE, 1897.

•would develop in her mind^. It is more or less inspirational work from
beginning to end. The storey or plot, then, was embraced in three parts —
corresponding to the main divisions of the upright and preliminary stroke of
the sketch. The heroine se£ts out with a very definite purpose in view.
She has a mission, an evange I, an object of high aspiration. (Here we note-
the aspiring and firm charat ;ter of blades that spring upward from the
ground. They reach a stag^ ; where they give place to a meandering and
embalanced piece of scroll -wP:>rk.) At this point in the story, the heroine
falls almost imperceptibly unttier the spoil of a purely human and instinctual
passion. Her high resolves bcegin to curl up, and indulgent self-introspection
follows. Another stage of thce plot finds the heroine making a fresh effort,
but face to face with nature, Sjjhe suddenly gives way, and a total collapse is-
witnessed. (Here we see th,e sketch represents the spears or blades a»
starting up a second time, lc>ut as suddenly flexed and broken down.) The
consummation of the ideal is Breached in the third stage of the work, where
in the very weakness of her- humanity she realises that far-off ideal to
which she had gone out in hoj >e and strength of purpose. She is married ;
and in the common uses of dfhily life she finds that happiness and rest of
soul which she had dreamed oft as so far from earth, so foreign to herself and
fellow-creatures, and so worthy of a living sacrifice. (Here we see the
scroll-work taking a fantastic shape like two swans, and between them a-
star.) The idea, although simple, and in a measure fanciful, gathers an
interest from the fact of the predictive character of the automatic sketch,
It may, or may not, be worthy of the designation of "a non-verbalised
expression of the subliminal consciousness," but it is brought forward
as possibly related to that order of phenomena.

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE CURE OF WARTS BY SUGGESTION.

[The following communication has been received from the Rev,
A. T. Fryer.]

March 13th, 1897.

The letters in the Journal S.P.R. [January and March] remind me that
when a boy of nine or ten years of age, I had an experience similar to that
of the correspondents in the result, though not in the modus operandi. I
have frequently heard of the scarlet thread method, but in my case I was
told by an old lady, now departed, to take a piece of beef the size of the wart,
bury it in the ground, and, she issured me, as the beef decayed so would
the wart disappear. I was stricty enjoined to say nothing about the opera-
tion to any one, and most necetsary did it seem that I should tell no one
where the beef was buried. I folowed the directions, and within a fortnight
or so the wart disappeared, and 1'have never had a return of such a visitant.
I know the exact spot where tl 3 beef was buried, and could point it out
if necessary. My old friend wai a very devout woman, who spoke of the
" charm " as a simple and natura way of removing a common disfigurement.

ALFRED T. FKYER.

No. CXLI.-VoL. VIII. JULY, 1HJI7.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PA«K

Change of Editorship of the Proceedings and Journal 97

New Member and Associates 97

Meeting of the Council 93

Supernormal Phenomena observed during Hypnotic Treatment. By Professor A.

Alexander [Concluded] 99

Ballechin House .. ..116

CHANGE OF EDITORSHIP OF THE PROCEEDINGS
AND JOURNAL.

As was stated in the Report of the Meeting of the Council in the
last number of the Journal, p. 82, this is the last Journal that will
appear under my management. During the interval that will elapse
before Dr. Hodgson, who has been appointed Editor of the Proceedings
and Journal, returns from America, communications for the Editor
should be addressed to

Dr. R. Hodgson,

c/o F. W. H. Myers, Esq.,

Leckhampton House,

Cambridge.

Dr. Hodgson is expected to return to England before the middle of
September.

H. SIDGWICK.

NEW MEMBER AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

BOSANQUET, MRS. O. V., 52, Queen's-gate, London, S.W.

CLARKE, R. F., 40, St. Giles, Oxford.

CURRIE, ANDREW S., M.D., 81, Queen's Road, Finsbury Park, N.

HINE, THOMAS C., 25, Regent-street, Nottingham.

HOLLANDER, BERNARD, L.R.C.P., 61, Chancery-lane, London, W.C.

98 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1897.

LUDLOW, COL. WILLIAM, Army Building, New York, U.S.A.

LUNN, CHARLES, 24, Avomnore-road, West Kensington, W.

Wilson, Robert, M.I.C.E., 7, St. Andrew's Place, Regent's Park,N.W.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

AMES, Miss EVELYN, c/o Messrs. Baring Bros., London.
ANDERSON, RICHARD G., Deadwood, South Dakota.
BRADLEY, MRS ELIZABETH D., Washington, Litchfield Co., Conn.
GUSHING, Miss ELEANOR P., 76, Elm-street, Northampton, Mass.
DIXON, GEORGE E., 82, West Jackson-street, Chicago, 111.
RKININGER, E. E., M.D., 353, South Oakley -a venue, Chicago, 111.
SMITH, BOLTON, 8, Madison-avenue, Memphis, Tenn.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held on July 23rd at the rooms
of the Society, 19, Buckingham-street, W.C. Sir William Crookes
occupied the chair. There were also present : — Professor H. Sidgwick,
Dr. Geo. F. Rogers, Dr. Abraham Wallace, and Messrs. St. George
Lane Fox, F. W. H. Myers, Frank Podmore, and H. Arthur Smith.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed as correct.

One new Member and seven new Associates, whose names and
addresses are given above, were elected. The election of seven new
Associates of the American Branch was recorded.

Several presents to the Library were on the table, for which a vote
of thanks to the donors was passed.

A discussion took place about the inquiry into the alleged haunting
of Ballechin House, of which an anonymous account appeared in the
Times during the month of June. It was decided to print a state-
ment in the Journal, explaining that the Council was free of all
responsibility in the matter.

It was agreed that General Meetings be held at the Westminster
Town Hall on Friday, November 5th, at 8.30 p.m., and on Friday,
December 10th, at 4 p.m., and also on Friday, January 28th, 1898,
at 4 p.m. ; and that the Annual Business Meeting of the Members
of the Society be held as usual at the Westminster Town Hall at
3 p.m., on the last mentioned date.

It was agreed that the next meeting of the Council be held at 19,
Buckingham-street, W.C., on Friday, October 15th, at 4.30 p.m.

JULY, is?*?.] Supernormal Phenomena. 99

SUPERNORMAL PHENOMENA OBSERVED DURING
HYPNOTIC TREATMENT BY DR. ALFREDO BARCELLOS,
OF RIO DE JANEIRO.

Communicated by PROFESSOR A. ALEXANDER.

[Continued from the June JOURNAL, p. 95.]

Corroborative evidence of the foregoing statements and further
particulars respecting E.'s case have been furnished by her fiance,
Senhor Antonio Pedro Piraentel, who is a medical student and interne
of the Misericordia Hospital. I visited him on March 6th, 1897. In
reply to questions, he said that he was staying at the Island on
June 22nd, 1896. when E., who had till then been violently agitated,
fell into the hypnotic sleep. This was before her father's return from
Botafogo. She slept for an hour and recovered her calmness. With
regard to the passes afterwards made with the letter, he confirmed
General Aranjo's description of their effect, adding that, when the letter
was handed to her, she thrust it aside on the pillow. On the following
day, at about 2 p.m., as the second attempt at telepathic hypnotisa-
tion was being made, he observed that E. did, in fact, look at the
clock and begin to console her bereaved sister ; but there were no
other indications that the experiment was a successful one. He was
also present at General Aranjo's house in the Rua da Passagem
when E. awoke and saw the hallucinatory figure standing by her and
patting her cheek. He appeared to have a distinct remembrance of
all the circumstances of this case, and assured me that my note of the
occurrence was in every point correct. Questioned as to the self-
induced sleep into which E. fell on three successive days, he declared
that he was not aware of the alleged deferment of the sleep on the
third occasion. He knew only that E. went upstairs at the usual
hour. Having shortly afterwards made enquiries of persons of the
family, he wrote to me at once saying that at one o'clock in the after-
noon of the third day the patient went up to her room, but fell asleep
only at twenty minutes past one. She was heard to repeat to herself
that she ought not to resist the suggestions of Dr. Barcellos. In the
same letter he mentions another case of auto-hypnotisation observed
in E., and this does not seein to have been led up to by any previous
suggestion of her hypnotiser. He recollects that the patient, while she
was yet residing in the Rua da Passagem, would rise and run to the
window on occasions when Dr. Barcellos was passing in the street.
The more satisfactory instance of clairvoyant perception furnished

100 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1897.

by the Bahia incident is also fresh in his memory. E. exclaimed,
" Poor fellow ! he has killed a man — but he is not to blame.
It was in self-defence." A telegram from the North bearing reference
to the homicide was published in the next day's papers, and later on the
family received a private letter containing details of the affair. In the
defence of a relative V. had killed some individual who had penetrated
into his house late at night. The unfortunate occurrence was abso-
lutely unknown to all of them when the exclamation was made.

To this confirmation of the evidence of the other witnesses Senhor
Pimentel adds that in October, 1893, he himself unconsciously trans-
mitted to E. a telepathic message. He was out fishing one afternoon
off the Icarahy shore on the Nictheroy side of the Bay, when, the boat
being upset, he very nearly lost his life in the water. About the time
of this accident E., who was then at home in the Rua da Passagem,
was heard to cry out, " He is drowning ! " It was only on his return
to Botafogo that the family were informed of the danger he had
incurred.

To the above facts respecting this subject communicated by Senhor
Pimentel I must add in conclusion that Dr. Barcellos was in regular
attendance on her for about two years, at the end of which time a cure
was supposed to be effected. But with E,'s recovery has coincided an
amnesia that embraces the greater part of the period of her illness.
According to General Aranjo, she can recall only the later hypnotic
sittings, and she has little, if any, memory of the various incidents
that occurred in the Rua da Passagem. It would seem, therefore,
that hypnotism has restored her to bodily health and the life of rela-
tion by causing the more or less complete submergence of a morbid
phase of her personality.

II.

The observations made during the hypnotic treatment of the
subject G. extend over the years 1895-6, and are, therefore, of more
recent date than the occurrences above narrated. They are, in general,
better attested ; the statements made by Dr. Barcellos being fairly
well supported by collateral testimony. His deposition, which is now
to follow, was dictated to me in Portuguese in the last fortnight of
November, 1896. It must be remarked that he is fond of citing the
very expressions supposed to have been employed by his patient, a
tendency that might excite suspicion in a case in which the memory is
so exclusively relied on. There is reason to believe, however, that in
some instances the words given were actually those spoken by her,
while in others the substance of her utterances is at least presented in

.in.v, us!)?.] Supernormal Phenomena. 101

a characteristic dress. Having called attention to this point with the
full concurrence of the doctor himself, I proceed to the translation of
his narrative.*

Capital Federal dos Estados Unidos do Brazil, Rua da Passagem, No. 28.

December 29th, 1896.

Donna G., married to a Senhor M., and resident in Botafogo, Rio di:
Janeiro, having undergone an operation that obliged her to remain two hours
under chloroform, manifested subsequent symptoms of neurastheny and
hysteria, and having passed through an acute crisis, afterwards fell into
a state of nosomania, showing inaptitude for all kinds of work and indiffer-
ence towards all the persons and things of her surroundings. [ThusJ she
would pass the day seated in a rocking chair, whither her food was brought
to her, for she could not muster up sufficient energy to go to the table and
take her repasts with the other members of the family. Varying hysterical
phenomena were present ; violent palpitations, [accesses of] suffocation or
giddiness, davits hystericits, childish terrors occasioned by futile causes, fre-
quent attacks of partial neuralgia, general debility, etc.

Although she had recovered by medical aid from the lesion from which
she had suffered, yet these various ailments persisted with a tendency to
increase ; and as the medication employed (tonics, douches, sea-baths,
electricity, sedatives, etc.) had been inefficacious, recourse was had to
hypnotism, and I was called by Senhor M. to take charge of the treatment of
his wife.

During the eight [first] sittings it was impossible to hypnotise her,
although there were evident indications that she was really a person who
was very susceptible to hypnotic influence. It was only on the occasion of
the ninth sitting that she fell into a state of suggestive catalepsy followed
by well-characterised and loquacious somnambulism ; the post-hypnotic
suggestions made in the cataleptic stage were perfectly well carried out, so
that a marked improvement in health rapidly ensued.

One day, as an experiment, I suggested to her that on the day following,
when her husband, Senhor M. , returned from his work, she should have,
as soon as she saw him, a violent fit of yawning, and should fall into a
hypnotic slumber of twenty minutes' duration. All this happened, but the
state into which she passed was one of somnambulic loquacity. While it
lasted she declared that she saw me close to her, and even went so far as to
address me directly. This experiment did much harm to the patient, who
afterwards requested me in her trance never again to induce the sleep with-
out being really at her side.

The somnambulism of this patient became more and more autonomous
in a way that rendered her sometimes entirely independent of the will of
her hypnotiser ; and so far did she go that in this condition she endeavoured
to direct her own treatment and prescribed for herself remedies, baths, etc.,

* The originals of this and of the statements of the other witnesses which follow
were sent to us by Professor Alexander, with his translations of them. — ED.

102 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1897.

which did not always produce a good effect. [The continuance of] this state
by my toleration — for I wished to verify the phenomena related by Teste and
other old magnetisers, who vaunted the efficacy of the remedies which
somnambules prescribed for themselves — resulted in a loss of precious time ;
and G., given over to her own control, began to obey the suggestions made
by me in a very imperfect manner.

If it is true that this toleration [of mine] was followed by effects so little
conducive to a cure, it is not less true that, in the observation of this special
state of autonomous trance, I had occasion to witness very marvellous mani-
festations of clairvoyance.*

TELEPATHIC CLAIRVOYANCE.

The first case of the kind happened on March 19th, 1895. I had just
paid a visit to Donna X., a patient who was convalescing from a pleurisy on
the left side. She lived in the Travessa Pepe, about a kilometre's distance
from the house in which the somnambule resided. I recommended to X. a
tonic regimen and a change of air. As slight symptoms of marsh fever had
appeared at intervals, I prescribed for her on March 15th an expectorant, —
arseniate of soda and quinine wine — and on the evening of the 19th I again
prescribed a mild expectorative potion and bisulphate of quinine, as may be
verified in the subjoined recipes.t I withdrew, leaving X. engaged in con-
versation with her children. Her condition [of health] seemed to be most
favourable ; there was no more feverishness than [might be indicated by a
temperature of] 38 '2, and I was convinced that, with the change to Tijuca.
the mild tonics I had prescribed and a nutritive diet, my patient, in spite of
her state of profound anaemia, would in a short time recover her health.

It was eight o'clock in the evening when I left X.'s house and set out to
hypnotise the above-mentioned somnambule. After the latter had been
thrown into the sleep and had received during her transitory cataleptic stage
various suggestions relative to her health, she passed spontaneously into the
alert state. Having discoursed in this phase on various topics she suddenly
became grave — frowned as if engaged in some effort of thought (como
pensativa e preoccupada), and with that vivid presentation that characterises
somnambules, uttered, in substance, the following words, which made a pro-
found impression on my memory : " Dr. Barcellos, that patient of yours is
dying. Poor thing ! — See the children weeping round her. Look — there
goes a messenger in all haste to your house to call you. This is what she
said : " (Here G. tried to imitate the faint tones of a person in articulo
mortis) — " ' Help me, Dr. Barcellos, I am dying ! ' ' (Returning to her
natural voice) "Poor thing! — A stout woman, too — and to say that stout-
ness is a sign of health. It is useless, doctor — she is dead ! " As at that
time the person I had just visited was [G. excepted] my only female patient,
I supposed, on hearing these words, that the reference must be to her, and I

* The narrator should have employed here the more general term " lucidity."
t The original prescriptions, sent to us by Professor Alexander, serve to fix the
dates of the incidents here related. — ED.

JULY, 1897.] Supernormal Phenomena. 103

therefore said to G., "Examine the dying woman. See what she is dying
of ; " to which the somnambule, after [another] effort of thought, replied,
"She has an obstruction in her chest on the left side ; but it is not that
that is killing her, doctor. What is killing her is her state of profound
anajmia.* It may be said that this woman's blood has been changed to
water in her veins. She is dead ! "

I was much struck by the singularity of this spontaneous communication,
for in the details known to me it was exactly applicable to the patient I had
[just] left, and the latter was not even known to the somnambule, who
moved in a social sphere completely different from that of X. I awoke G.
and went out reflecting on the lucky hits she had made. I believed, how-
ever, that, as I had left my patient X. in the condition above referred to,
the story of her death was [merely the result of] imagination. On passing
by the chemist's at No. 2, Rua de General Polydoro, in returning home-
wards, I was told by the apothecary Senhor Henrique de Figueiredo that the
people at the Travessa Pepe had sent for me in all haste. He thought that
my patient X. had had a fit, for as I was not to be found, they had called
I)r. Sequeira Dias, who had gone thither and had not yet returned. When
I heard this from the apothecary, I exclaimed, "Then she is dead ! for that
other patient of mine in somnambulism told me that she was dying." I
hurried to the Travessa Pepe, and on arriving there I found that the un-
fortunate X. was in reality — dead !

I informed Dr. Sequeira Dias and the bystanders of the marvellous vision
experienced by the somnambule, and they then told me that, after I had left
at eight o'clock, X. had still remained in the room engaged for some time in
conversation, although a feeling of profound dejection had come over her.
She was subsequently called to take a bath in the bed-chamber, and
bade good-night to all. After she had shut herself in the room, the noise of a
falling body (am baque) was heard ; the door was opened, and they d iscovered
her stretched on the ground in a dying condition. She expired a few
minutes afterwards.

Dr. Sequeira Dias and I diagnosed a cardiac syncope [as the cause of the
obit], this being, by the way, a frequent accident in persons suffering from
pleurisy on the left side.

The next morning early I met with Senhor M., G.'s husband, who had
been present as usual at the sitting of the preceding evening. I informed
him of the event, telling him that unfortunately everything had happened
in accordance with his wife's announcement.

Two days after this occurrence I returned to hypnotise my somnambule,
and when she had again fallen into her trance, I addressed her more or less
in the following terms : "Do you know that all you told me at the last
sitting was realised point for point ? My patient, who was, indeed, unknown
to you, died. I have been trying to make out some explanation of the means
that enabled you to witness the scene. [I think] it is a question of thought-

* Medical terms, such as " anaemia, '' are much more familiar to educated
Brazilians than they are to the ordinary run of English people.

104 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1897.

transference. Naturally my patient at the moment of death strongly directed
her thoughts to me, calling me to her aid. As I am not a sensitive, the
vibrations from her brain could have no effect on mine ; nevertheless, my
brain being en rapport with yours, the thought of the dying woman was
reflected to you and gave rise to the veridical hallucination which you
experienced. Was it not thus that the phenomenon took place ? " I was
expecting to receive a confirmation of my ideas, when the somnambule burst
out into a loud laugh and answered, " Nonsense, doctor. You neither know
nor understand anything about it. I saw and I heard " (G. accompanied
these words with appropriate gesture, placing her finger on her eyes and her
ear) ' ' all that passed in the other house ; and I was made to see and hear by
one who stands behind you." As I turned about instinctively, G. continued,
"Don't you see [the form], doctor? Only see — it is looking at you. It
holds a bouquet of flowers in its hand. It ia your guardian angel." Having
said this, the somnambule began to expatiate on other subjects bearing on
her malady.

Down to the present day G. in her normal state ignores these and other
communications made in somnambulism.

PREMONITIONS.

Case I.

G. having been much prostrated on the day following that of her vision
of the occurrence in the Travessa Pepe, I agreed with her husband to inter-
rupt her in all such manifestations.

One day, when she was again in a state of trance, she exclaimed, ' ' A
girl ! " (thoughtfully) " a young girl !" (Here she raised her hand to
indicate the girl's height) " with loose hair." (Becoming very thoughtful
and frowning) "She is dead!" I at once ordered her to withdraw her
attention from this vision, telling her that she had nothing to do with what
was happening outside.

Having return edhome, I was called some 1 wohours afterwards to see Ottilia,
the daughter of Colonel M. de C. She was a girl of fourteen years and always
wore loose hair, thus presenting the characteristic pointed out by G. Her
height also, which was appropriate to her age, roughly corresponded with the
idea given by the gesture of the somnambule. This girl suffered from con-
genital cyanosis, there being in her case a permanence of the foramen ovule,
and now and again she passed through nervous crises, which were so
habitual that [when they occurred] the doctor was no longer sent for. This
time, however, the crisis was so strong that they had recourse to me as the
nearest practitioner. On the following day she was seen by her own medical
attendant, Dr. Sd, Ferreira ; but in spite of our professional care, Ottilia suc-
cumbed to her malady on April 22nd, 1895, about eight days after the
premonition of the somnambule.

This coincidence of an immediate call to see a girl presenting some of the
characteristics indicated by the somnambule (loose hair, height, age) may
indeed lead one to suppose that the event was super-normally foreseen ; and
it is to be regretted that the exigencies of the treatment obliged me to
interrupt G. in the midst of her communication.

JULY, i«»7.] Supernormal Phenomena. 105

i Xtilia was not known toG. I myself knew her only by sight, and that
because she lived at a short distance from my house on the opposite side of
the way.

Case II.

As I had passed several days without going to hypnotise my patient,
Sriihor M. sent a messenger to know whether I was unwell. I replied that
I was well, but that my son Luiz had been laid up with serious illness. I
promised, nevertheless, that I would, if possible, go and hypnotise G. on the
<lny following. I went out in fact early next morning in search of a doctor
to substitute me at my son's bedside during my absence ; then, at eight
o'clock, Senhor M. appeared, and in conversation with my wife, told her
that G. had passed the night well. [This being so] he had not come
to call me. He wished, however, to obtain news of Luiz. Thereupon he
enquired whether it was not a fever that the boy had and whether there had
not been during the night grave symptoms of pernicious fever. My wife
confirmed this and added that in the early morning the boy had been very
delirious, that his temperature had risen to nearly 41 deg., and that he had
presented phenomena of insensibility on one side of the body. Senhor M.
-seemed anxious to know whether an energetic treatment had been adopted
to counteract these symptoms, and when he was informed that the disease
had [indeed] been combated with energy by the application of hypodermic
injections of quinine and that the fever was already much abated and the
boy was sleeping, he exclaimed with satisfaction, "Then he is saved !"

The lady's curiosity being excited, she asked in her turn how Senhor M.
was aware of these [circumstances]. He replied that when the messenger
of the preceding evening had returned with the news that the boy was ill,
G. remained for some time in a thoughtful mood, and then spoke in this wise:
*' Yes, it is Dr. Barcellos' son that is ill. He is very ill. I see him. This
night he is going to have very grave symptoms of the fever he suffers from.
If they are not counteracted with all energy, he will die." Senhor M. then
declared that he had desired to inform us of what his wife had said ; but
owing to the lateness of the hour and the possibility that the vision was
mere imagination on her part, he had not ventured to send us the warning.
Impressed, however, [by the occurrence], he had come early to enquire after
the boy, and to learn whether G.'s predictions had been realised [or not].

My son Luiz was ill in the last fortnight of April, 1895.

Case III.

At the period of this boy's convalescence the sornnambule warned me in
time of a serious illness that threatened my wife, Donna Luiza Barcellos,
and [thus] gave a still more convincing proof of the facility with which she
established a telepathic relation with other patients of mine and persons of
my intimacy. G. was acquainted with Donna Luiza, as well as with other
members of my family ; but on the occasion of the incident which I am
about to relate she had not met with her for some time.

It was before awaking from the hypnotic sleep, and while she was yet
in a state of somnambulism, that G. addressed me in the following manner :

106 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JCLY, isw.

"Doctor, come here on Friday — no, not Friday — Saturday. But mind you
come without fail ; if not, you will repent it." On Saturday I went to
hypnotise her as usual about nine o'clock in the evening, G.'s husband being
present according to his custom. In her trance state she said to me : " Doc-
tor, your wife Donna Luiza is going to fall seriously ill." Then beginning
to act as if she herself were feeling the future sufferings of Donna Luiza,
she continued, "Oh, what a pain in the eyes! Good God — my eyes!"
(This always with appropriate gesture.) "Profuse — abundant perspiration !
Doctors— many doctors ! " (Imitating persons writing prescriptions)
" Quick— take it to the chemist's ! " Then changing her tone to one of
advice, she said, "Doctor, do not wish for many physicians, for they con-
fuse everything. Wh*t your wife is going to have is a fever, which may kill
her in four or six hours And it is not only she who will fall sick. Your
little children, too, will become ill. But what is the cause of this ? Is it in
the house they live in— drains out of order 1 " And lapsing into thoughtful-
ness, she added, as she gesticulated with her arms, "No,— all around there it
is the same." It was, indeed, true that in the immediate vicinity of the house
where we lived there were at that time several cases of rebellious fever. As-
the previous prediction of the soinnambule had been realised, I was rendered
very uneasy (imprcssionado) by this announcement, and I implored her to
tell me whether there were any means of preventing such a catastrophe ;
to which G., after long concentration, replied, " Yes. Take your wife
outside [the city] as quickly as possible. Climate of the mountains — air of
the woods ! Even so, she will have what I said, but it will not be a matter
for anxiety." With but little disposition to withdraw from the city, I said
that I already knew what I had to do, — that if my wife were laid up with
sickness, I would not call a doctor, but would take her immediately to Tijuca.
On this G., becoming angry, said emphatically, " What, doctor, do you,
want to play with this ? In short, I have told you what I had to tell you, —
do what you have to do. And good-bye, — I am going." On terminating
these words G. fell into a state of complete lethargy and was awaked.

On returning home 1 related what had happened to my mother-in-law,
Donna Joanna Azambuja, and to my elder daughters, Henriqueta and
Eulalia, begging them to keep the matter quite secret in order that Donna
Luiza might not be alarmed. I then urged the latter to go early on the
following day to Tijuca in company with her son Luiz, who had not yet
recovered from the effects of his fever. Donna Luiza, however, demurred
to going on Sunday, alleging that some guests were coming in the evening
to a small musical party, and that she must be present to receive them. She
promised, however, to go without fail early on Monday morning. Donna.
Luiza's state of health seemed so perfect and her spirits were so good that I
consented to her proposal.

She passed the Sunday admirably well. In the evening we had music
and dancing, which lasted till two o'clock in the morning. The guests then
withdrew, and the family, before retiring, met together in the dining-room to-
take a cup of tea. It was on this occasion that Donna Luiza exclaimed,
" Oh, what a headache ! " and as she stretched herself, she added, " I feel

JOLT, is!)-.] Xu iwrn-ormal Phenomena. 107

pains all over my body." I looked at her and noticed with anxiety how
swollen her face appeared — her eyes bloodshot, her frontal veins prominent,
as well as the temporal arteries. I made her retire to bed and take a cup of
hot tea. Meanwhile I waited anxiously for daybreak. The patient passed
the rest of the early hours in alternate [states of] agitation and stupor.

When Monday dawned it was wet and chilly. There was a wind from
the south-west and a drizzling rain. In spite of the bad weather, I woke
my wife and invited her to make herself ready to accompany her son Luiz to
Tijuca, according to her promise. To this she replied in a drawling voice
that she could not, — that she was very ill. In view of the bad weather and
the state of the patient, other persons of my family looked upon this journey
as an [act of] imprudence ; but I turned a deaf ear to their protests, and in
order to oblige Donna Luiza to go, I appealed to her maternal affection,
telling her that her son would go only in her company, and that unless this-
journey to Tijuca were undertaken, the boy might have a relapse and die.
She then asked for her clothes in order to dress, but fell asleep once more
when we had left her [alone]. She did not wake even when I again entered
the room after waiting for her till I was tired. I spoke to her, shaking her
forcibly to rouse her from the torpor into which she had sunk, and I left my
mother-in-law and daughters at her side to help her to dress. In this man-
ner I succeeded in transporting her to Tijuca.

And now [it must be observed] that during the two first days of her stay
there Donna Luiza, in spite of the intense cold caused by the rains from the
south-west, was constantly bathed in profuse perspiration, although she
wore nothing over her dress but a light cape ; while the pain felt in her eyes
(photophobia) during these two days was so great that it was with much
difficulty that she could keep them slightly open.

As to the children of my family, they did, in fact, have slight attacks of
fever. The predictions of the somnambule were therefore realised in all
their details.

Case IV.

As G.'s state [of health], although it is much improved, has not permitted
a suspension of the hypno-therapeutic treatment, the sittings have continued
throughout the current year of 1890.

On August 15th of this year, there died at the age of fourteen a niece of
mine, named Carmen. She was the daughter of a widow, Donna Maria
Luiza de Villas-boas Barcellos, a public school teacher who lives at Meyer,
this place being in rectilinear distance about eleven kilometers away from
the quarter where the somnambule resides. Carmen fell seriously ill about
the middle of the year — haemoptysis, hectic fever, etc. — and for this reason
she was taken in the beginning of her illness to Nova Friburgo, whence she
returned in a much worse condition. On the eve of the day for hypnotising
G. I went to see my niece and found her very ill ; it aeemed that she had
but few days to live. Her medical attendant was Dr. Luiz Santos, who on
the occasion was employing very energetic medication (sodium salicylic in a
tonic potion, hypodermic injections of arsenic).

108 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1897.

G., who in her normal state knew absolutely nothing of this [case of]
sickness, and Avho was not so much as personally acquainted with the
patient, spoke as follows, while in her sleep-waking condition: "Doctor,
that young girl is ill —seriously ill— but she will recover. There are too
many remedies — she can't support them. But she will recover. What
vitality the girl has ! They ought to give her arsenic only, in small doses,
generous wines and nourishing food. At the place where she is the air is
very good. She will recover, doctor ! "

The sanitary conditions of the house occupied by Donna Maria Barcellos
are in truth excellent ; the situation is an open one, and the residence stands
on a small elevation, where the air is constantly renewed. — a fact that G. in
her normal state would ignore.

As the previous predictions had been fulfilled, I informed my sister-in-
law of this spontaneous declaration of the somnambule. Carmen, whose
health declined more and more, was, nevertheless, submitted to the same
treatment as before, to which was added [the application of] injections of
.ttnnn Maragliano.

Some time after, my daughter Henriqueta being present, G. in her alert
state returned to this subject. "Doctor," said she, "the girl continues
[to be] very ill. She cannot bear so many remedies. But what vitality
the girl has ! She will recover, however." I noticed that G. in asserting
that Carmen would be cured, no longer spoke with the same emphasis and
conviction observable on the first occasion. Indeed, her manner was rather
indicative of doubt. Asked by me what medicine was most suitable for the girl,
she concentrated [her thoughts] for a short time and then said, as she
frowningly pointed to the right side, " Do you see, doctor ? Do you see ? He
does not want me to speak. He does not want me to say what she ought
to take." It did not occur to me to ask on the occasion who this
personage was that was thus visualised by her.

Carmen grew worse and worse. Some days after the last sitting, my
(laughter Henriqueta being again present, the somnambule with her wonted
frown and with alternate contractions of the masseters exclaimed, "They
are all in black. They are sad. What is it? Where is it T' (Becoming
pensive) "Ah, it is the girl. She will die, doctor." (Speaking with much
nervous agitation) "But the fault is not mine. They would not let me
s:iy what she ought to take. I am not to blame— and even in the beginning
they did not do what I said. Poor thing ! But what vitality the girl has ! "

It was a fact that Carmen's disease had made increasingly rapid progress ;
her state was a desperate one, and what surprised everybody was the vital
resistance shown by the girl, for she lived on in a dying condition for more
than fifteen days. The malady was a fatal one. the prognosis certain ; but
the only source of information apparently accessible to the somnambule was
that furnished by her faculty of reading the thoughts thac occupied my mind
and of seeing from afar events in which I was personally interested.

Subsequently to this occurrence G. has manifested lucid phenomena,
but not to the same degree as in the preceding cases. Thus it was that she

JULY, 1897.] Supernormal Phenomena. 309

foresaw the recovery of a paraplegic patient, whose paralysis, after having
resisted all kinds of medication for [the space of] nine months, did in fact
yield to hypno-therapeutic treatment, according to the prediction of the
somnambule. In this instance also G. in her state of trance alluded to the
patient without reference to the latter on my part, or any question whatever
bearing on the subject.

In the month of November [of the current year] G. declared that she
would be restored to health on December 10th and that she would then
lose, not only all her lucidity, but even her predisposition to somnambulism.
In compensation I was to meet in my medical practice with other somnam-
bules, etc. This declaration was very agreeable to her husband, Senhor M.,
and to myself, inasmuch as we both desired to see her radically cured. On
November 19th, however, I was again called to her by a letter in which she
"begged and entreated that I would not abandon her. In her alert state she
told me that the prediction of her definite cure had not been realised,
because she had made it under the influence of my verbal suggestions; — that
there was still debility of the brain and irritation of the pneumo-gastric
nerve. These hypnotic sittings, therefore, are yet continued, but at weekly
intervals, it being my intention to take timely written notes of all facts that
may be of importance to psychical studies.

[Signed] DR. ALFKEJJO BARCELLOS.

Dr. Barcellos states, in reply to further questions, that G was a
sufferer from the melancholy, and not the acute form of hysteria.
Besides the state of apathy in which he first found her, she showed
total incapacity for intellectual effort ; she had no power of fixing her
attention ; in reading the papers she would, on arriving at the end
of sentences, forget how they began ; in the presence of visitors her
ideas became confused, and she found it difficult to sustain a conversa-
tion. No attempt was made to discover whether any regions of
anaesthesia or analgesia existed in this patient, or whether there were
any marked lacunne in her memory of the past. With regard to her
alleged lucidity in the trance state, my informant is positive that in
her case no " fishing " for clues was used, nor was there any leading
up to the subject of her visions and predictions by approximate guesses,
after the manner of professional clairvoyants. It is, indeed, evident
from his narrative that the scenes present to her inner perception were
preceded by nothing more than a few moments' concentration, and
were described at once with an unhesitating belief in their actuality.
Asked whether G. had ever made wrong predictions, Dr. Barcellos
replied that, with the exception of her failure to foresee Carmen's
death, he was not aware that .any announcement made by her in her
lucid state had proved, on enquiry, to be false. In the course of
the sittings she had had other visions, which were not of a kind to
admit of verification.

110 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1897.

MAP SHOWING PLACES MENTIONED IN THE NARRATIVE.

A— Situation of Dr. Barcellos' house in the Rua da Passagem, corner of Ru&

General Polydoro.

B— Situation of house where X. died, in the middle of the Travessa Pepe.
C— Situation of Senhor M.'s house in the Rua San Joam Baptista, 50 m. from thj

corner of the Rua Voluntarios da Patria [the straight line running towards A].
D — Small hill on which stands house where Carmen died, on the left of the Meyer

station.

E— The Asylum on the island of Bom Jesus ; residence of General Aranjo.
The distances between these places are given in metres,

Senhor M., above mentioned as the husband of G., is a professor of
mathematics in the Military School of Rio de Janeiro, and is widely
and advantageously known in the scholastic circle. From his verbal
comments on Dr. Barcellos' narrative, which was first read aloud to
him, and afterwards left in his hands for a more attentive perusal, the
following corroborative statement was drawn up, and to this, after
some corrections, he has appended his signature.

January 3rd, 1897.

Having listened with attention to the reading of Dr. Barcellos' account of
the phenomena of clairvoyance and premonition manifested by my wife G.

JULY, 1897.] Supernormal Phenomena. Ill

when in a state of somnambulism, I declare that [the narrative] is in general in
accordance with my memory of those facts. I was present, without a single
exception, at the hypnotic sittings, my only desire being that G. should
recover from her very precarious state of health. Nevertheless, I could not
help being surprised at such manifestations of supernormal faculties.

In the case of this patient, hypno-therapy at once produced a good result,
which was not obtainable by other [modes of] treatment. I recollect the
failure of the experiment made by Dr. Barcellos when he trusted in the
remedies indicated by G . in her state of autonomous trance ; and also the
unsuccessful issue of another experiment of mine, when, yielding to the
solicitation of a Kardecist friend, I allowed him to send spiritist medicines
for the use of the patient. In touching on this point, I must declare that
neither my wife nor I was in sympathy with the belief of this friend. She
looked upon spiritism even with aversion, and rejected the remedies as soon
as she knew whence they had come. G. is a Catholic, but by no means
prone to bigotry (beata). As for me, I had always felt the greatest indiffer-
ence with regard to such subjects.

I will now refer to the principal points in Dr. Barcellos' narrative, in
order to corroborate them.

It is true that G. , in obedience to a verbal suggestion [which was] made
after many others on the preceding day, once fell asleep as soon as she saw
me come into the house, and [then] began to address her medical attendant
as if he were [really] present. The remarkable sitting in which G. announced
the death at a distance of the patient X., took place, more or less in the
manner described by Dr. Barcellos. After this lapse of time, I cannot be
sure of all the words uttered by G. in somnambulism ; the language
attributed to her, however, seems to me to be characteristic in its vivacity,
and to render faithfully the substance of the communication. I remember
more especially the description given by G. of the physical condition of the
person who was dying, and in this principally I can guarantee the fidelity
of the narrative. At the next sitting another incident occurred tending to
prove G.'s clairvoyant faculty, and of this Dr. Barcellos makes no mention.
She affirmed that, at the house where the patient had died, the man had an
access of suffocation (estava com falta de ar), and was fanning himself. It is
a fact that Dr. Barcellos was afterwards called to see him on that [very] day,
and found, as he himself asserts, that [Senhor L., the person referred to,]
had symptoms of tachycardia. I had long known these people, but I am
quite sure that G. had absolutely no knowledge of them ; nor did her doctor
inform her that he was in attendance on the patient X.

Passing [now] to other points in the narrative, I can also certify that G.
was not acquainted with the girl Ottilia ; nevertheless, everything happened
in accordance with [Dr. Barcellos'] account. There was the same absence of
personal relations in the case of Carmen, whose death she finally foreboded
after wrongly supposing that the [girl] might be saved.

I attach much importance to the incident that occurred when the boy
Luiz was ill. For some days Dr. Barcellos had not come to hypnotise my
wife. I therefore sent a mulatto boy to enquire whether he was unwell, and

112 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1897.

the messenger returned with the answer that it was the [doctor's] son who
was sick in bed. We received no more information [than this] on the subject \
notwithstanding which, G. spoke of the danger that threatened the boy
during the ensuing night, saying that he would have symptoms of pernicious
fever, and that he would be lost if the fever were not counteracted in time.
As the hour was late, and as I was doubtful whether this were not a mere
fancy on the part of G., I could not make up my mind to warn Dr.
Bareellos immediately. As is proved, however, by his declaration, my
wife's prognosis was realised, and on the following morning, in conversation
with Donna Luiza, I obtained news of the boy's health. The references to
G.'s. declaration, and to my conversation with Donna Luiza, are in
substance correct.

My memory likewise allows me to confirm in a general manner the
exactness of the details relative both to the sitting in which my friend Dr.
Barcellos was warned of the approaching illness of his wife, and to those in
which the somnambule accompanied at a distance the sickness of the girl
Carmen.

Other slight indications of the possession of supernormal faculties were
given by G. in the course of the sittings. In her normal state she shows a
retiring disposition, very different from the assurance [manifested] in her
trance. She has but few acquaintances, and she lives almost exclusively for
her family and her domestic occupations. To judge from appearances, her
waking memory is — at least in the majority of the [above] incidents —
unaware of what has occurred. A fortiori she ignores that her case is now a
subject of study for the psychical world.

[Signed] F. J. DE M.*

The second proof of clairvoyance furnished by G. on the day
following the death of X. had escaped Dr. Barcellos' memory ; but
having heard Senhor M.'s account, he now recalls and confirms the
circumstances as they are above narrated.

Senhor M. believes that his wife was in her normal state when she
warned him of the crisis through which the boy Luiz was about to pass.
Her first words on this occasion were, " Why, I was already aware that
he was ill, — and very ill." On the other hand, Dr. Barcellos thinks it
likely that the premonition was given during a momentary, though
perhaps imperceptible, lapse into the trance. No reference is made in
G.'s presence to these manifestations ; the supposition is that she has
no remembrance of them, and this supposition is rather borne out by
the fact that she has made allusions to the more trivial events of some
of the latter sittings.

It is in general very difficult to prove that the information shown
by clairvoyants has not come to them through some normal channel.

* The original deposition in Portuguese contains the full name and address of
this witness.

1897.] Supernormal Phenomena. 113

Senhor M., however, is quite sure that his wife could have no know-
ledge of her own in regard to the situation of the house where Carmen
lived. In her girlhood, long before Donna Maria Barcellos moved to
Meyer, she had once passed through the place, but had never been
there since. G. in her waking state never enquired after the health of
her doctor's niece, as she certainly would have done were she normally
aware of the girl's illness.

I must now present further evidence bearing on G.'s version of the
death in the Travessa Pepe. It will be recollected that, on the
occasion of the syncope, a certain Dr. Sequeira Dias was, in the absence
of the regular medical attendant, called in to see Donna X. His
testimony is contained in the following deposition : —

Rua da Passagem, No. 13, Botafogo, Capital Federal,

December 30th, 1896.

One night in March, 1895, at 10 o'clock, a Senhor L. came to call me in
all haste to visit in the Travessa Pepe (District of Botafogo) the patient X.,
who is referred to in the narrative of Dr. Barcellos. He supposed that it
was merely some kind of fit, — was quite sure [in fact] that it was an attack of
a hysterical nature. I had only time to seize my hat and follow him, and on
arriving I found X. still stretched on the ground and [in a] dying
[condition]. We transported her at once to a canvas bed in the drawing-
room, where the unfortunate lady breathed her last.

I can bear witness to the exactness of other particulars which, according
to Dr. Barcellos, were mentioned by the somnambule : thus, X. was stout
in person, although this embonpoint was characterised by flaccidity. There
were, indeed, by her side an elder daughter and two boys, who wept for the
loss of their mother.

The patient suffered from anaemia consequent on a miscarriage ; but she
had apparently recovered from the pleurisy on the left side, as I verified on
the occasion that the treatment of her medical attendant, Dr. Barcellosr
consisted in tonics.

Having thus arrived too late to render any assistance, I withdrew, and
on my way home I met Dr. Barcellos in front of his house. Before I could
give him the news of the unexpected decease of X., he told me that he knew
she had died, for he had been informed of the death by another patient of
his, [who was] in a state of somnambulism. We returned together to the
Travessa Pepe in order to agree upon the diagnosis. We both concluded
that the cause of the decease was a cardiac syncope, which was in my
opinion a direct consequence of the profound ansemia of the patient, whereas
the pleurisy from which she had suffered had merely predisposed her [to such
an accident].

[Signed] DR. CARLOS CALVET DE SEQUEIRA DIAS.

The chemist of the Hua General Polydoro and his assistant also
testify that, before any confirmation of the death announced by the

114 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1897.

somnambule had been received, Dr. Barcellos told them that it had
actually occurred and referred to the strange manner in which he had
•obtained his information. Senhor Henrique de Figueiredo says : —

Rio de Janeiro, January 1st, 1897.

On the evening of the 19th of March, 1895, Senhor L. came to my shop
together with Dr. Barcellos and carried away medicine (as shown on the
prescription of that date) for the patient X. , while Dr. Barcellos set out for
the house of Senhor M.

About 10 o'clock on the same evening Senhor L. returned in search of
that doctor, and came into the shop with signs of agitation, saying that X.
had a fit— that he thought she was dying — that he did not know what it was.
Not finding Dr. Barcellos, he proceeded to call Dr. Sequeira Dias.

It might have been, perhaps, half -an -hour later when Dr. Barcellos
appeared again, having at that moment returned from Senhor M. 's house,
and I at once told him that they had come from the Travessa Pepe to call
him in all haste. On hearing why he had been sent for, he exclaimed in the
tone of one who surmises strongly something that yet needs confirmation,
" Then she is dead !"

I do not quite recollect whether it was before setting out for the
Travessa Pepe, or afterwards, that he gave me a rapid account of the vision
•of the somnambule ; but I know that I sent a shop boy thither to discover
whether the obit had taken place or not.

X. had an elder daughter, two small children and a son, who was old
•enough for military service on the occasion of the revolt.

[Signed] HENRIQUE DE FIGUEIREDO CORREA.

The assistant's statement clears up a point which Senhor Henrique
•de Figueiredo leaves in doubt : —

Rio de Janeiro, January 24M, 1897.

All that is affirmed by Senhor Henrique de Figueiredo Correa is true.
It is, moreover, certain that, as soon as Dr. Barcellos heard that they had
•sent for him from the Travessa Pepe, he not only exclaimed that the patient
had died, but also told us with some detail about the sitting held with the
somnambule. This was before he had verified whether the death had taken
place or not.

I was the first to tell him that Senhor L. had come in all haste to call him.
[Signed] HENRIQUE SAUERBROXN DE SOUZA.

On different occasions I had heard the members of Dr. Barcellos'
family allude to the facts certified by the foregoing witnesses, and that
in such a manner as to corroborate them. A more formal enquiry
was, however, necessary, and on January 19th, 1897, I questioned
them, notebook in hand.

Donna Luiza Barcellos confirms her husband's account of the circum-
stances of their son's illness. She supposes, however, that Senhor

JULY, !«»:.] Supernormal Phenomena. 115

M. called to enquire after the patient about seven o'clock in the morn-
ing. He began the conversation by saying "I am already aware that
the boy has passed a very bad night," and then he proceeded to tell her
li«i\\- his wife had predicted that the lad would have symptoms of per-
nicious fever and how she had added that he would die, were these
symptoms not counteracted in time.

With regard to her own sickness in 1895, she perfectly recollects
the sufferings through which she passed on the night of the musical
party, as well as her profuse perspiration and pain in the eyes after her
removal to Tijuca.

In further support of Dr. Barcellos' allegations respecting the
latter case, Donna Joanna Azambuja and the girls Henriqueta and
Eulalia affirm that they were told of G.'s premonition immediately
after it had been received, and before Donna Luiza had any symptoms
of fever.

To this I must now add some evidence of my own. On the Sun-
day following this sitting, I met Dr. Barcellos in one of the Tijuca
street-cars, and he at once related to me, with some vivacity, the par-
ticulars of the prediction made by the somnambule. My memory does
not permit me to state whether his narrative, written at a much later
date, tallies in all points with the account then given by him, but I can
affirm that, in the substance of the premonition, no alteration appears
to have been made. I further recollect that I strongly advised him to
take his wife outside the city without delay.

Donna Henriqueta guarantees the fidelity of the references made
to the two sittings at which she was present. Having heard that part
of the narrative that concerns her, and being questioned as to the
actual words employed by G. when speaking of Carmen, she exclaimed,
" That is just what she said." As her memory is decidedly a good one,
her corroboration is of value.

Neither she nor the other ladies interrogated feel any permanent
interest in psychical phenomena.

I subjoin to the above depositions two numbers of the Diario
Official, giving the dates of the burial of Donna X. and Ottilia
M. de C.* The former, whose name I am not at liberty to publish, is
shown to have been buried on March 20th, 1895 ; the latter is men-
tioned in the obituary notice for April 23rd of the same year. This,
again, is the date of interment, which in this hot climate is rarely
delayed more than twenty -four hours after death.

* These have been sent to us by Professor Alexander, and give the dates
named.— ED.

116 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1897-

In concluding the review of the phenomena observed in the case
of this somnambule, it must be recorded that an attempt to transmit
to her telepathically a mental order resulted in complete failure. The
experiment was made on May 9th, 1895, it being afterwards verified
that G! . was suffering at the time from a bad headache.

Taking into consideration the whole of the evidence now presented,
there seems to be a strong presumption that in the three first premoni-
tory cases, G. really obtained some glimpse of the immediate future ;
but in her declarations concerning Carmen it is likely that her know-
ledge was gathered directly from the mind of the operator. Thus, Dr.
Barcellos has great faith in the employment of arsenic in the treatment
of phthisis ; the somnambule recommended arsenic as a sufficient
therapeutic agent. He was convinced against his desire that there was
absolutely no hope of saving Carmen ; the somnambule first echoed his
desire and then his conviction. Nevertheless, for convenience' sake the
narrator, who recognises that in this instance mind-reading was
probably operative, has roughly classified the case according to its
purport.

The facility with which sornnambules evoke hallucinatory figures
and hold converse with imaginary personages is well-known. Pre-
conceived ideas or the involuntary suggestions of the operator and others
will, in all probability, account for G-.'s guardian angel and the invisible
being who would not allow her to indicate the remedy for an incurable
disease. Dr. Barcellos is inclined to believe that, in a late instance,
one of these visions was suggested by a question put to her at a previous
sitting.

There are reasons why Senhor L.'s corroboration of the case of
telepathic clairvoyance has not been obtained, and these have been
explained privately to Mr. Myers. I think it will be conceded that
the proofs adduced of the reality of this occurrence are sufficiently
strong as they stand.

BALLECHIN HOUSE.

It has been brought to the notice of the Council that, in spite of a
disclaimer by the Honorary Secretary in the Times, (June 22nd), there
is still an impression in certain quarters that the Society is responsible
for the hiring of Ballechin House, with a view to the investigation of
phenomena alleged to occur there. The Council therefore desire to
make it known to all readers of the Journal that this impression is
altogether erroneous. The question of hiring Ballechin House was
never brought before the Council in any form whatever, and they are
entirely without responsibility with regard to it. They desire also to
impress upon their members the importance, in investigations of the
kind in question, of taking all possible care to prevent the publication
of names, where there is any reason to suppose that this would cause
annoyance. This rule has been strictly observed in all cases in
which reports of experiences of this class have been published in
the Proceedings. — ED.

No. CXLIL— VOL. VIII. OCTOBKB, 1S<>7.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAOE

Editorial 117

Coses 120

Obituary : -Richard Holt Hutton. By F.W. H. M 132

EDITORIAL.

The change in the Editorship of the Journal affords a favourable
opportunity for calling the attention of our members once more to
some of the ways in which they might render more efficient service
to our investigation than they have hitherto done. The greater
part of what the Society has already accomplished would have
been impossible without the co-operation of a large number of
individuals in giving information and helping to furnish corroborative
testimony. Some of these have been Members of the Society anxious
to further its aims in general, many others have been originally
strangers to its work, but ready to help through their own interest in
the subject. We recognise fully that there must always be many of
our members who, for one reason or another, cannot participate in our
active work, and we are grateful for their continued financial support
and should be glad to have their number largely increased by the
addition of new members. We hope, however, that more of our
members may be induced to offer some personal assistance either by
making fresh experiments in thought-transference, automatic writing,
crystal-vision, etc., or by collecting testimony to what we have called
spontaneous experiences. I incline to think that, with the expenditure
of comparatively little effort on the part of each member, the material
for our examination, and possibly the evidence for supernormal
phenomena, would be increased enormously.

Many persons are under the misapprehension that we have already
collected as much material as we need on the line, for example, of
:, telepathy between the living ; but we have obviously not done so until
we have reached the stage where no reasonable person douJJfes ln
existence of telepathy. The further collection of exper
for telepathy is of urgent importance, first for the sake of

118 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1897.

completest possible proof of the existence of that faculty, and also because
it is only by dint of careful and varied experiment that the laws which
govern its manifestations are likely to be in some degree discerned. I
may add that the experiments which are of most value are those with
agent and percipient at a distance from one another, of which so far
we have only a small number of cases. New and carefully recorded
experiments are therefore constantly needed ; and where spontaneous
experiences occur they should be recorded immediately, and especially
if possible before verification, and all the corroborative testimony
obtainable should be added. Although we have been dwelling upon
these points since the beginning of our investigation, I fear that our
members as a body are still by no means alive to their importance.
We most earnestly desire fresh documentary cases. Not infrequently
have members and other persons interested in our work given me oral
accounts of experiences of which contemporary records might have
been made, and to my demand for the written testimony and my
remonstrance on finding that it did not exist, the reply has been that
they supposed that we had abundance of such matter. We have not.
We need vastly more. And we make again a special appeal to our
members to help us by being on the alert to record their own psychical
experiences immediately and also to secure the immediate record of all
that come under their notice, and to send such documents as soon as
possible to the Secretary. It is a good plan to post accounts of such
phenomena at once (to some friend of the winter's or to some officer of
our Society) on letter-cards, so that the official stamp of the date of
posting may be imprinted upon the letter itself.

It is for matter of this sort that we primarily ask, rather than for
speculative opinions, or for accounts of old incidents, not based on
contemporary notes. In the initial stages of our work, such laxer
evidence was sometimes of use, since a mass of material was needed on
which to base preliminary classifications. At the stage, however, that
we have now reached, the quality of the material is of even more
importance than its quantity. I would further remind members that
the Journal is open for comment and criticism upon articles which
have appeared in our Journal or Proceedings or elsewhere; — such
criticism being of course the more valuable when it is itself supported
by new and enlightening facts.

Our members are aware that the printing of cases in the Journal
does not necessarily imply that they are to be regarded as affording
any proof of supernormal phenomena, but they will, we hope, assist the
student in forming some judgment of our material, and lead to the
careful recording of fresh experiences. The cases that I propose to

<><T., i«»7.] Editorial. 119

print in the next few issues of the Journal will be chiefly American,
and I shall endeavour to choose such as may be instructive to those of
our members who are willing to begin the work of collecting. I have
brought from America a batch of nearly 500 type-copied cases which
have been selected from a mass of material on file at the office of the
American Branch by Miss Edmunds, now Acting Secretary of the
Branch, and according to the lists prepared for me by Miss Edmunds,
there are at least 279 of these which are lacking in one or more details
of important corroborative testimony. This lack is usually owing to
the failure of witnesses to reply to our repeated enquiries, and although
sometimes this failure results from a deliberate intention of refusal,
in very many cases the testimony would have been forthcoming had the
witnesses been asked by those collecting the cases while the cases were
fresh, or could they have been personally interviewed by our collector.
Such deficient cases can scarcely help us far to any reliable conclusion
as regards the question of supernormal phenomena ; but unfortunately
we cannot yet tell, when we begin to investigate any particular case,
whether or not we shall succeed in getting the essential testimony.
In the United States, in consequence of the larger number, as I think,
of cases to be dealt with, and the smaller number of active workers,
we have probably not been able to give nearly so much time to each
individual case as in England ; and the greater distances in the States
render personal interviewing impossible in many instances unless the
American Branch were much more amply endowed with funds for
travelling expenses and had more workers in different parts of the
States who could give some time to the investigation.

But in the large mass of material collected in America, besides
that which primd facie points to the occurrence of supernormal
phenomena, we have numerous files of cases, mostly in their original
manuscript form, which appear to me to be of no inconsiderable value
in the general study of our subject, owing to their apparent affiliations
to supernormal tendencies. Such cases are worthy of the full attention
of the student of the special experiences which we designate as
veridical, and frequently suggest the scattering shots that hit only the
edge of the target or miss it altogether. This branch of our subject, I
venture to think, although constantly before us as collectors in sifting
the matter sent to us, has hardly received sufficient attention in our
Journal or Proceedings, and it seems to me fitting that some of this
"rejected " matter should eventually find a place in the Journal, with
appropriate comments.

For pecuniary reasons, it is at present undesirable to increase the
size of the Journal, but I am anxious that it should be, if possible,

120 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1897.

a constant source of fresh and interesting information for our members
and a constant stimulus to renewed exertions on their part. Any
suggestions that my readers think may be of assistance in producing
this result will be gratefully received. Communications should be
addressed to me to the Office of the Society, 19, Buckingham Street,
Adelphi, London, W.C.

RICHARD HODGSON.

CASES.

[A.B. signifies American Branch, and the numbers which follow indicate
the position of each case in a recent filing at the American office.]

L. 1089. A" Pe [A.B. 152.]

The first account of this case is taken from a letter by Mr. W. R.
Jewell, which appeared in The Philosophical Journal for October
19th, 1895.

. . . Dr. T. N. Boue" is yet practising medicine in Lodi, 111., the
leading doctor in that region, and one of the best and most reliable of men.

In December, 1874, the wife of Dr. T. N. Boue", of Lodi, 111., started
to Jacksonville, Fla., for her health ; she was suffering from pulmonary
trouble, and Dr. Boue" was much concerned about her, as she made the
trip alone.

The second evening after she started he lay down to rest a little, and
behold he saw his wife get off the train ; saw an old man meet her on a
rickety platform, with a lantern, conduct her along a dark street to a little
hotel, light a candle, lead the way up a narrow stairs, set the candle on a
little table, and leave the room ; saw his wife follow into the room, sit
down upon a stool chair, look about the little room of dingy walls and
naked floor, with a heavy cheerless, homesick expression, and there the
vision vanished.

The doctor at once told the writer about it, and we said, " You
were asleep, and dreamed in your anxiety." He said, "No, I was
not asleep, but as wide awake as ever in my life, and I just know that I
saw Erne as plain as ever in my life. She looked so tired and pitiful."

The doctor decided that he would not write her about the vision, but
wait until she returned home, and see if she had stopped at such a time
and place. When Mrs. Boue" returned the next April, he asked her how
she happened to stop at such a place, as she had a sleeper. She at once
asked him how he knew about it. He said, " Never mind now, were you
tired ? " "O very, very tired ; and when I got into the old hotel, and that
little bare room, I was sick to the heart." In a word, all had happened just
as the doctor saw in the vision to the smallest details. What makes this
so very strange is that Dr. Boue* never had a vision before or since, unless
very recently. He is an educated, matter-of-fact man ; he and I have often
talked of the vision since.

OCT., is!»7.] Cases. 121

Mrs. Bou3 was a remarkably bright lady, excellently educated, true as
the needle to the pole. She died the next autumn (1875) of consumption,
and often marvelled how it was possible for her husband to get just that
one brief but clear view of her over a distance of some hundreds of

W. R. JEWELL, Editor News.

In reply to my enquiry for further information, I received the
following letters from Mr. Jewell and Dr. Boue* : —

The Danville News, Danville, 111.,

W. R. Jewell, Editor and Proprietor.

December 12th, 1895.

RICHARD HODGSON, ESQ., — DEAR SIR, —In reply to yours of 10th. . .
Dr. T. N. Boue", Loda, (not Lodi), 111., will verify the facts as to the
one I published in the P.J. I am not properly a Spiritualist, or apt to
believe strange stories, but feel that they should be collected, classified,
sifted, and made-serviceable to a more systematic understanding of mind
and spirit. ... w R JEWELL.

T. N. Boue, Physician and Surgeon.

Loda, 111., December 12th, 1895.

RICHARD HODGSON, — MY DEAR SIR,— Your letter stating that W.
R. Jewell had published some experience of mine in The Philosophical
JonriMl of October 19th, is just to hand. I have not seen the publication,
but suppose the statements made by him are correct, as I had related the
[incident] to him in person. If you will kindly send me a copy of the
journal containing Jewell's statements, I will verify the accuracy of them
under my own signature. Courteously yours, T TC P

I sent Dr. Boue a copy of Mr. Jewell's account, and he wrote
again as follows : —

Loda, 111., January 8th, 1896.

Mr. Jewell's account of my vision, published in the P.J., is practically
correct. Instead of her walking to the hotel, she rode in an old rickety
bus drawn by a pair of mules. The rest of his statement is absolutely
correct. It was at Huntsville, Alabama, where I saw all that Jewell has
stated occur, and I was in Loda, 111., at the time.

That is the only experience of the kind that I ever had.

_ T. N. Bouri.

L. 1090. Ad Ps [A. B. 155.]

For obvious reasons we do not give the real names or initials of
the persons concerned in the following experience, the accounts of
ii which were obtained for us by Mrs. C., Associate of the American
Branch. It will be seen that there is no evidence that Mrs. M.
knew anything whatever about Miss Z., and in the absence of any
specific details as to the personal appearance of Mrs. M. and the

122 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1897.

dream-figure, the evidence is very slight for associating Mrs. M. with
the dream, apart from its curious character and its coincidence with
the death of Mrs. M.

N.Y., February 21st, 1896.

DEAR DR. HODGSON,— The lady who had the exceedingly vivid and
disagreeable dream is an intimate friend of mine, and one of the most
truthful, sensible, and intelligent girls I ever knew. Dr. G. is also a friend
of mine.

There is a part of the story Miss Z. does not mention, which makes it
yet more striking. It is that Mr. M., the husband of the woman who died,
admired Miss Z. extravagantly, and his wife probably knew of it. I should
say that in her last moments the woman reflected that if she died her
husband would try to marry Miss Z. It was probably with thoughts of
hatred and jealousy in her mind that she breathed her last. . . .

[MRS. C., Associate A. B.S.P.R.]

February 4M, 1896.

I dreamed that a woman came to my bedside, and I thought she was
going to kill me. In my terror I arose and pushed her away with all my
strength, although the woman seemed too weak to resist. While always
dreading to hurt anyone either mentally or physically, my terror seemed to
completely change me, and I pushed her through the next room, through a
closed and locked door to the head of the stairs, down which I intended to
throw her. When we reached the stairs she vanished and I fled back to my
room through the closed door. I looked at the clock in my dream and saw
it was twenty minutes past two. At that moment I awoke and feeling
uncanny over the dream, pulled a cord I had attached to the gas and turned
up the light. To my surprise the clock showed just twenty minutes past two.

That morning on my way to business I met our physician, Dr. G. , to
whom I told the dream and the incident about the time.

Miss S. and Mr. M. were friends whom I met each morning in the train.
Mr. M. was not in the train that morning, and the following morning Miss S.
told me that she had heard that Mr. M.'s wife had died the night before the
las. (The night of my dream.) I asked at what time, and Miss S. said ' ' about
twenty minutes after two." I had never seen Mrs. M., but Miss S. had
met her, and when 1 asked Miss S. to describe Mrs. M., she quite accurately
described the woman I had seen in my dream. fMis.s Z 1

N. Y., February 4tfi, 1896.

I well remember meeting Miss Z. the morning after her dream, which
she narrated to me, before there was any possibility of her having knowledge
of the death of Mrs. M., whom she did not know and had never seen.
Indeed her illness was unknown to Miss Z. TO P G M D 1

New York, March Uth, 1896.

DEAR DR. HODGSON, — You remember the dream in which my friend,
Miss Z., saw a dying woman enter her room in an exceedingly hostile

OOT, I8i»7.] Cases. 123

manner at the very moment when, by the clock, the woman died. You will
also remember that you asked me the date of the dream. Fortunately I can
give the exact date, since Miss Z. recorded the curious dream in her journal,
where it stands to this day. The date was the early hours, soon after
midnight, of November 10, 1890.

You asked me what additional evidence I could give as to Mr. M.'s
admiration for Miss Z. There fortunately too the evidence is clear. . . .
Before I was acquainted with Miss Z. I used to see her month after month
going down to business in the elevated train with myself, in the morning.
She was a very attractive looking girl, with a refined sweet face. That drew
me to her at first. Then 1 used to see the man, many years older than
herself, hovering around her, keeping a seat for her when the train was
crowded, and fairly straining himself to do the agreeable to her. It was so
plain as not to be mistaken. She on the other hand was polite, indifferent,
and looked, on the surface of things, as if she wished him anywhere else.
The performance regularly repeated went on under my eyes so plainly that
I speedily " caught on," as we Yankees say, to the situation.

[Mils. 0.]

New York, March 28th, 1896.

DEAR DR. HODGSON, — . . . I have seen in Miss Z.'s journal the record
of the death of Mrs. M. I was, however, mistaken if I told you the vision was
recorded there. The morning of the vision Miss Z. told Dr. G. of it. You
have Dr. G. 's testimony to this effect. When shortly afterwards she heard
of the death of Mrs. M. at the very moment when her dream occurred, she
thought the coincidence so remarkable she recorded the date of the woman's
death in her journal. The dream or vision, therefore, she gave you from
memory, the record of the death from her journal. The death happened to
be recorded only because she learned it took place at the moment of her
dream. At the time she told Dr. G. of the dream she had not heard of
Mrs. M.'s death. . . . [MKS a]

G. 253. [A.B. 156.]

From A. E. Dolbear, Professor of Physics in Tufts College, Mass.

Tufts College, Mass., April llth, 1895.

DR. R. HODGSON, — DEAR SIR, — . . . Perhaps I have told you before
that I have had a great many such or hallucinations, but I am reminded of
one which happened last summer. I was a lecturer at Greenacre, Me.,
where Miss Farmer, daughter of the late electrician, Moses G., had a
summer hotel and many of the prominent occult folks of the country
gathered. I stopped for the night at the house of Miss Farmer — the old
homestead. During the night I dreamed that Mr. Farmer was in the room
and talked with me, though I couldn't see him. I said to him, " How shall
I know it is you, and not some one else ? " He replied, "I'll show you my
hand " ; so his left hand was extended to me, and I took hold of it. It was
very cold and made me so shudder that I was at once awakened. I found

124 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1897.

myself uneasy and turned over in bed, to ease my uncomfortableness.
Directly I slept again and dreamed over the same occurrence ; when
Farmer showed his hand, I asked him how I should know it to be his hand.
He replied, " I'll move my fingers so," and he straightened out his first and
third fingers, while the second and fourth were bent in a very uncommon
way. I can't move my fingers in such positions without the aid of the other
hand. After that the " seance " ended, and I forgot all about it, till next
morning at breakfast with Miss F., I chanced to recall it and told her I had
dreamed of her father and I related the above to her ; when I came to the
finger business she dropped her fork, and with much earnestness said,
"That was one of his tricks. He could get the fingers of his left hand into
uncommon positions, and for the amusement of visitors and intimate
acquaintances would do it." 1 never knew he had any such trick, so I was
surprised. I recorded the above facts the same day. Those whom I told
and especially Miss F., who were Spiritualists, seemed sure I had had a
visit from Mr. Farmer. . . . A. E. DOLBEAR.

Tufts College, Mass., April IBth, 1895.

DR. B. HODGSON, —DEAR SIR, — I had met Mr. Farmer two or three
times. Was not intimately acquainted, and have no recollection of ever
seeing him do any kind of a trick or indeed that he could do any. Each
time when I did meet him it was on electrical business, and I knew nothing
about him socially. It does not seem probable to me that I ever saw him
twist his fingers in any way. ... A E DoLBEAR

Miss Farmer writes as follows to Professor James in corroboration
of Professor Dolbear's statement : —

Eliot, Maine, June 15th, 1896.

. My father had great regard for his friend [Prof. Dolbear], and
respect for his valuable contributions to science. After reading his book,
Matter, Lther and Motion, he said, ''I would like to talk with Dolbear and
tell him some of the experiences that have come to us since mother went, and
.see what he would say to them." . . . Callers coming in, the subject
was dropped.

In 1894 Prof. Dolbear kindly consented to become one of the speakers at
Greenacre. The inn being full, I took him to Bittersweet, and he occupied
the library chamber. In course of conversation the next morning, he said,
" I had a strange dream last night — I dreamed of your father." That did
not seem strange, as he had looked at his life-size portrait before retiring. I
.asked about the dream and he said he dreamed he heard his voice and was
told it was my father. He asked how he should know it was he. The reply
was, "I will show you my left hand and arm," and he did so twice. The
Professor still questioned " How shall I know it is your hand and arm rather
than someone else's?" The reply was, ''I will show you a trick with my
fingers," and then the Professor described and tried to imitate it, but could
not. I was dumb with astonishment and then said, " Why, Professor, that
was a favourite trick of my father's. When tricks were performed, he

OCT., 1897.]' Cases. 125

would say, ' Who can do this,' and then, without using the right, would
bend the joints and twist the fingers of the left hand in a way that I never
saw imitated.1' That to me was a positive proof of my father's identity ; it
was like him — he liked a joke. He longed to be able to share with his
friends the conviction of truth which had come to him. He knew that with
Prof. Dolbear no proof would be convincing unless of the most unique
character. The Professor said he was wakened and lay for a time thinking
of it ; then fell, asleep and dreamed the same thing again. He was much
pleased with my corroboration of the circumstance and said he would
willingly travel sixty miles for an experience like that. In 1895 he came to
Greenacre a second time and at dinner with Rev. E. P. Powell, of Clinton,
New York, in speaking of my father, used these words, " I talked with him
last summer." Knowing that my father had passed out in 1893, Mr.
Powell was mystified, and I said, "Professor, Mr. Powell does not under-
stand how that can be, you should explain yourself." He then related his
dream. 1 listened carefully and noted that the story was just as he had
given it the year before.

I omitted one circumstance of 1894. Coming from the tent after the
lecture, I met Dr. J. L. M. Willis, my father's physician, and a very
intelligent man. I presented him to Prof. Dolbear and then said, "Do
you remember, Doctor, of any especial trick that my father could do with
his hands V" He answered, "No, I do not know of any except this." He
then put up his bj't hand and trying to cross his fingers said, *' I can't do it
—I never saw anybody else who could." . . .

SARAH J. FARMER.
[Associate A.B.S.P.R].

L. 1091. A'l Pn [A. B. 168.]

The following account appeared in The Metaphysical Magazine for
July, 1896, under the title "A Remarkable Occurrence," by Mr. H.
Clay Neville, who wrote to us from the office of a local paper called
the Christian Co. Republican, and has given us some assistance in
collecting evidence about the case.

The following story, strange as it may appear, is true in every detail, and
the facts could easily be proved in any court of law.

In October, 1890, T. B. Garrison, now of Ozark, Mo., was a miller at
Fordland, on the Kansas City, Fort Scott and Southern Puiilroad. He was
then thirty years old and married. About ten o'clock one evening, while
attending a religious meeting, the miller was seized with an irresistible
impulse to see his mother. Though left in charge of their infant child,
while his wife, one of the converts, went to the altar, Mr. Garrison made no
delay. Giving the child to a friend who stood near, he hurriedly left the
church.

Stopping at his home to explain his departure, Mr. Garrison was strongly
urged by his mother-in-law to abandon his unreasonable determination.
But he was deaf to all opposition.

126 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1897.

The widowed mother lived with Mr. Garrison's sister in a log cabin
near Ozark, about eighteen miles west of Fordlancl. Before Mr. Garrison
reached the station, the train which would have taken him eight miles of
his journey had steamed away in the darkness. No thought of turning
back, however, entered the man's mind. He started at once to walk the
entire distance, following the railroad to Rogerville (ten miles east of his
mother's home), and then a wagon road leading down the slope to Ozark.
As he travelled this lonely path his thoughts were constantly with his
mother — not with any apprehension of sickness or danger, but he felt
strongly drawn toward her.

About three o'clock in the morning Mr. Garrison reached her cabin.
The door was fastened, as usual, with latch and string. Passing his knife-
blade through the string-hole, he lifted the latch, thus effecting an entrance
without waking his sister. He called his mother, and receiving no answer
became alarmed. The second call aroused his sister. A candle was then
lighted, and an examination disclosed the startling fact that the mother had
been dead for some time !

Mrs. Garrison had retired about ten o'clock the night previous, feeling
as well as usual, though not in robust health. During the day she had
attended the funeral of a neighbour ; but otherwise nothing out of the
ordinary routine had occurred. The cabin consisted of one room only, but
mother and daughter slept in separate beds. The younger woman heard no
struggle in the night, and, had it not been for her brother's strange visit,
would probably have slept till day.

The above facts have been much discussed, and a few days after Mrs.
Garrison's death the St. Louis Globe-Democrat published a full account of
the affair.

H. CLAY NEVILLE.

Mr. Garrison writes : —

Gardner and Garrison, Dealers in Fancy and Family Groceries.

Ozark, Mo., Jidy 29th, 1896.

MR. RICHARD HODGSON, — DEAR SIR, — Answering your letter of July
15th in regard to my experience connected with the death of my mother, I
will make the following statement. My mother, Nancy J. Garrison, died
on Friday night, October 4th, 1888, at her home three miles north-east of
Ozark, Christian County, Missouri. She was 68 years old. I was then
living at Fordland, in Webster County, Missouri, about 18 miles north-east
of my mother's home. I had not seen my mother for two months at the
time of her death, but had heard from [her] by letter from week to week.

On the night of my mother's death there was a meeting in Fordland, and
myself and wife attended the preaching. We had then one child, a baby a
year old. The meeting had been going on a week or more. About ten
o'clock, just before the meeting closed, while the congregation was singing,
I felt the first desire to see my mother. The thought of my mother was
suggested by the sight of some of the penitents at the altar, who were very
warm and sweating. My mother was subject to smothering spells, and

OCT., is<»7.] Cases. 127

while suffering from these attacks she would perspire freely and we had
to fan her. In the faces of the mourners I seemed to see my mother's
suffering. And then the impulse to go to her became so strong that I gave
the baby to a neighbour-woman and left the church without telling my wife.
She was in another part of the house.

The train going west which would have taken me [to] Rogersville, seven
miles of the distance to my mother's place, was due at 10.30 p.m., but before
I got home and changed my clothes and returned to the depot, the cars had
left the station. I still felt that I must see my mother and started down to
railroad track alone, and walked to Rogersville. Here I left the railroad
and walked down the wagon way leading from Marshfield to Ozark, Mo.
It was about 3 o'clock a.m. when I reached my mother's house. I knocked
at the door two or three times and got no response. Then I kicked the
door, but still made no one hear me. At last I opened the door with my
knife and walked in and lighted a lamp. Then my sister, Mrs. Billie Gilley,
the only person who had been living with my mother, awoke and I asked her
where mother was. She replied that she was in bed, and I said " She is
dead," for by that time I felt that she could not be alive. She had never
failed to wake before when I had entered the room at night.

I went to my mother's bed and put my hand on her forehead. It was
cold. She had been dead about three hours the neighbours thought from
the condition of her body. She had gone to bed about ten o'clock at night,
feeling better than usual. She and my sister had talked awhile after going
to bed. They were aiming to come to Ozark the next morning, and intended
to get up early.

The above facts cover my experience as fully as I can tell the story. I
have no explanation for the matter. It is as much a mystery to me now as
ever. I could not believe such a strange affair if told by any one else, and
yet I could swear to every fact stated. . .

THOMAS B. GARRISON.

Ozark, Mo., August 17th, 1896.

MK. RICHARD HODGSON, — DEAR SIR, — I send you a statement made by
my wife about the death of my mother. . . .

I have not yet been able to get my sister's statement. She lives a few
miles out of town. I will get her to tell about the death of mother and my
coming home that night, when I see her.

After finding that mother was dead I went to three neighbour families
right away and had the women come and stay with us till morning. Mrs.
Green, Mrs. Walker, and Mrs. Gardner were the women who first heard of
mother's death from me. They still live in that neighbourhood and would
confirm my story so far as it relates to my coming to mother's that night and
finding her dead.

Would you like a statement from these women ? I shall be glad to give
you all the facts connected with the strange occurrence, for it has been to me
a mystery of the greatest perplexity. . . .

T. B. GARRISON.

128 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., i«*7.

Corroborative statements are as follow : —

Ozark, Mo., Aiiqust 12th, 1896.

RICHARD HODGSON, — DEAR SIR, — We received your letter asking for a
statement from me in regard to the death of my husband's mother.

I remember the occurrence just as my husband has written it. I was
very much surprised to find him gone from the church, and more so when I
got home to hear he had started seventeen miles after night without saying
A word to me, as he never left home even for a few hours without telling me
where he was going. My mother (Mrs. Butcher) was at the house. When
he started he left word with her telling me he had gone to see his mother,
but I could hardly believe it, it being such a strange time to start such a
distance. He did not say anything about going to any one except my
mother. He has always said he felt as if he must go. ...

MINNIE GARRISON.

Ozark, Mo., September Uth, 1896.

MR. R. HODGSON, — Hearing that you were trying to find out the
particulars about the remarkable circumstance of Mr. Garrison's experience,
about the time of his mother's death, I decided to write to you. I was
living about 150 yards from Mrs. Garrison at the time, and Mr. Garrison
came to our house between three and four that morning to tell us of his
mother's death, and we learned the matter then just as it was printed in
the newspaper. . . . MRS c c GRE£N

Gardner and Garrison, Dealers in Fancy and Family Groceries.

Ozark, Mo., September 16th, 1896.

. . . I was living with my son-in-law, Thomas B. Garrison, at the
time of his mother's death, on October 3rd, 1888.

Garrison and his wife went to church in Fordland, Mo., and I remained
at home. About ten o'clock that night T. B. Garrison returned home and
said, "Ma, I have took a notion to go home, in Christian Co., and see
mother.1' I was surprised at his starting at that hour of the night. 1 asked
him where Minnie was. He said she was at church, and he told me to tell
his wife where he was gone when she returned. The above is true. . . .

ELVIRA BUTCHER.

L. 1092. Ae PS [A.B. 169.]

The first account which follows is taken from an article on
"Dreams," by Miss Giddings, which appeared in The Metaphysical
Magazine for September, 1895.

Some few years ago I was the guest in the home of an intimate friend,
whose unmarried sister, also an associate of my own, was away at the
time. My hostess, whom I will call Mrs. J., was taken suddenly and
seriously ill. The family doctor was summoned, but as he was away, a
strange physician was called, and he was in attendance upon Mrs. J. when

OCT., 1897.] Cases.

at midnight her own doctor arrived. Early on the following morning I
received a telegram from the absent sister, saying : "Is anything wrong at
home? Answer immediately." I replied, and before the day was over, a
letter addressed to me, and mailed when the telegram was sent, came from
the absent sister, saying : —

"I have had a peculiar and impressive dream of home. I saw A.
lying on the bed as if very ill ; while in the dressing-room, as if in con-
sultation, were two doctors —Dr. L. (the family physician), and a stranger,
a tall, dark man, whom Dr. L. addressed as Dr. Rice. So impressed am I
that something is wrong that I write to you in order to know as soon aa
possible the meaning of this strange vision."

Her dream was as vivid a portrayal of what was actually occurring at
her home during the night, as I, personally present, could have given.
She was almost correct as to the name of the strange doctor, whom she
heard addressed as Dr. Rice, but whose name was Reed. It will he offered
in explanation that she was anxious about home, and naturally dreamed of
her sister. But this explanation will not suffice, for she was a girl much
away from home. The married sister was never ill, and no member of the
family had ever seen or heard of the strange physician. That the sick
sister was thinking of the absent one I know. She was a woman of deter-
mined will and of unusual magnetic power, as her success as a public
speaker attests. May she not, through her desires, have unconsciously
thrown upon the mind of the absent one certain photographic revelations
of what was actually occurring ?

Miss Giddings writes : —

37, Walnut street, Somerville, Mass. , January 8th, 1896 .

DR. RICHARD HODGSON, — DEAR SIR, — . . . The dream related
occurred to my friend Mabel Jenness, at a time when her sister, Annie
Jenness Miller, the well-known lecturer on " Dress," was ill at her New
York residence. The facts are as I have related them.

I was at that time editing Mrs. Miller's magazine, and the letter to which
reference is made came to me. I did not keep it, but Mabel Jenness, now
Mrs. Win. A. Venter, Coates House, Kansas City, will verify my state-
ment, or so . . . would Mrs. Miller, 114, 5th Avenue, N.Y. . . .

(Miss) LAURA E. GIDDINGS.
Mrs. Venter writes : —
Mabel Jenness, Lecturer. Author of " Comprehensive Physical Culture."

Coates House, Kansas City, Mo., February 3rd, 1896.
MB. RICHARD HODGSON, — DEAR SIR, — Your letter of January 28th
has just reached me. I will endeavour to give you as nearly as possible the
facts concerning the "vision" of which Miss Giddings has told you. I was
in the West on a lecture tour, and the last night of my stay in Detroit,
Mich., I had a dream in which I saw my sister, Mrs. Miller, lying ill.
There were several people about her, and all was excitement. There were

130 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1897.

two physicians in consultation ; one I recognised as Dr. Louis Sayer, of
New York, (now deceased), the other I did not recognise, but his name
came to me as Rice. In appearance this man was above medium height,
very slender, and had dark side-beard.

The exact date of this experience I cannot give, but I should say it was
about the middle of December, 1889. The dream greatly impressed and
annoyed me. I tried to put it from me, but it persistently recurred to my
thought— a haunting fear. I could not make it seem a dream, and after several
hours I sent the telegram to which Miss Giddings referred. The message was
sent from Ypsilanti, Mich., at about noontime, on a Monday (I remember well
the day of the week) ; the answer to it was received at about 9.30 o'clock in
the evening of the same day. That which to me was a dream actually
occurred in detail while I was dreaming ; and the physician who was in
reality in attendance with Dr. Sayer was the embodiment of the one in my
"vision," but his name was Ried, instead of Rice as I dreamed.

I have had other and similar experiences, but none so authentic. The
others I cannot prove to have happened. .

MABEL JENNESS VENTER

Mrs. Miller writes : —

St. Denis Hotel, N.Y., February 1st, 1896.

MR. RICHARD HODGSON, — DEAR SIR, — . . . The dream experience
related by Miss Giddings occurred just as related in her article. The date
of the illness was December, '89. She was my guest at the time, and con-
sequently knew the details.

When my sister's telegram arrived, Dr. Louis Sayer (he died
immediately afterward) was sitting upon the side of my bed, and I
remember that he was profoundly impressed by the enquiry, knowing it
the result of a psychological impression received from a dream. . . .

A. JENNESS MILLER.

L. 1093. A<i P"

The following account was sent to us by Mrs. Knight, of
Heathlands, Malvern Wells. It was written immediately after the
incidents described, as explained below.

I was staying at Udny Castle, in Aberdeenshire, on a visit, and was going
on for another visit to Lytham, in Lancashire, on the 18th of September, 1895.
I had wished Mr. and Mrs. Udny and the friends in the house good-bye
when I went to bed, knowing I should have to make a very early start in the
morning So I had the curtains drawn and the shutters shut to make the
room dark and to get a good night's sleep.

But I woke up with the feeling of being gently wakened ; I was
swayed, or rather rocked backwards and forwards, till I felt the bed to see if
that were moving, and then I was gently and quietly raised up. The air
fluttered over my head, a shimmering light came, and I felt some one was
detained, lingering and hovering over me. To myself, 1 said : "Some one
is dying ; some one I know is leaving this world and blessing me " ; and

OCT., 18<>7.] Cases.

then the hovering and the fluttering were greater. Then, aloud, as if some
one were willing me (for I never speak aloud to myself) I said : " If dear
Med were here she would tell me at once who it is." As if in answer came
a rap by the head of my bed, a rap I have never heard before, and was
certainly not made by human hands. I jumped out of bed, and said, "Who
am I to see ? " I lit my candle, and looked at my watch, and it was seven
minutes past three. I put the candle out, and was getting into bed, when I
thought, " How can I rest while a soul I know is passing from this world ? "
and I knelt down and said a prayer for the soul. I never thought it was my
dear nurse, Mrs. Medley, whom I always called " Med," but I thought of a
friend I knew in Warwickshire.

After I got into bed and put the candle out, there was a light I cannot
describe all round my bed. It was a silvery radiance, and as it passed away
flashes of gold and gold stars fell. About five I went to sleep for half-
an-hour, but woke up with my hand on my neck trying to take off a flat
black insect. . . . One seemed on my forehead, one on my neck, and I
said again aloud : "This is dear Med's Death Dream ; how interested she
will be to hear it. Who could have died this morning ? " Mrs. Medley had
always told me that dreaming of insects on the head and neck was a certain
sign of death, and I never liked her saying this, but never believed it.

I was travelling from 6.30 that morning, and arrived at Lytham about
8 p.m., when I was met at the station by my friend, with a telegram in her
hand, saying, "My dear, I have very sad news for you." And I answered,
"Then it was dear Med." And she said, "Oh, I am so glad you were
prepared. We feared from the telegram it would be such an awful shock to
you." I answered, " I was not prepared, only I know it all now."

I took the first train in the next morning to Malvern Wells, where we
were living, and at that station was met and told my dear nurse had died at
three. I said, "No, it was later." On arriving at the house my sister said
she had looked at the watch, and the hands were between five and ten
minutes past three. It was seven minutes past three, when I looked at my
watch on that morning.

The day before she had been very well, and my sisters had taken her for
a drive round Upton-on-Severn, but she was constantly talking of me, and
saying, " I am not happy about Etta. She is not well ; I want to see her."

I had not said in any letters that I was not well, but I had not been
very well.

She was the dearest and truest friend I have ever had, or ever can have.
She was my sisters' and my nurse, and had been in my father's service before

I was born. . . ,,

HENRIETTA KNIGHT.

In a letter to Mr. Myers, enclosing the account, Mrs. Knight
writes : —

Heathlands, Malvern Wells, April 20th, [1897.]

. . . I was so afraid of imagining or forgetting, that the day I arrived
home I wrote the bare facts, which I have copied for you. I have simply

132 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1897.

copied what I wrote down. T could not express the wonderful light, or the
absence of fear ; and I am naturally a nervous person. The whole of the
day before she died she was talking of me, and her sister said if she were
permitted to see any one, she knew she would ask to see me. At 5 o'clock
she was taken giddy and sick, but my sisters never thought death was near.
At 5 o'clock I had a most curious sensation, and could not work or read.
The Castle was full of people, and they laughed at me for not joining them
as usual, and going out in the gardens ; and I could not say why, but I
could not have gone, and I could not describe my feeling. Only that
morning I had had a letter saying how well she was, so I was not thinking
of her. The love between her and me was greater than the love of many a
mother and child.

HENRIETTA KNIGHT.

OBITUARY.

RICHARD HOLT HUTTON.

By the death of Mr. R. H. Hutton, Editor of the Spectator, etc.,
our Society loses one of its original Vice-Presidents, and several of our
members lose an honoured friend. Mr. Button's interest in some
part at least of our field of enquiry was of old standing, and went
deep. It rested on the religious rather than on the scientific instinct.
The Christian religion was to him a dominant reality ; and he felt that
since a spiritual world had thus been revealed, it was reasonable, it
was consonant with what he deemed the design of the Creator, that
fresh manifestations thereof should be from time to time vouchsafed ;
that to them who knock it should be opened ; that they who seek
should find. With this underlying thought, and with a mind at once
meditative and eager, he followed with a friendly, though not an
anxious, interest the main steps of our work ; — his own convictions
meanwhile independent of any results which we might or might not
attain. A talk with him was a valued privilege ; whether agreement
were more or less complete, there was no man whose cordiality was
more whole-hearted, — no man who gave a stronger impression of a life
passed in serious thought, a spirit long trained to duty.

One more has gone from us of that small band of men —not easily
to be replaced — who gathered round our work in its first beginnings,
and gave the sense of a reserve of forces ; — of friends behind us whose
approval was for us no slight satisfaction, no trifling gain.

RW. H. M.

No. CXLIII.— VOL. VIII. NOVEMBBE, 1897.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Associates 133

Meeting of the Council 133

Cases 134

Correspondence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

NEW ASSOCIATES.

ASTLEY, Miss, 3, Halkin-place, Belgrave-square, London, S.W.
BALLARD, REV. R, M.A., B.Sc., Morschach, Anlaby-road, Hull.
BLATCH, Miss ALICE, 34, Blandford-road, Bedford Park, W.
DELOUEST, EDWARD, Ocala, Florida, U.S.A.

HEBERT, P. Z., M.D.,L.R.C.P., 16A,Old Cavendish-st.,Cavendish-sq.,W.
MACINTYRE, Miss G. C., 8, Pont-street, London, S.W.
MACINTYRE, JOHN, M.B., F.R.S.E., 179, Bath-street, Glasgow.
PRESCOTT, Miss FRANCES E., 152, Cromwell-road, London, S.W.
SMITH, REGINALD A., B.A., 78, Cranwich-rd., Amhurst-park, London, N.
STANSFELD, J. B. EVELYN, M.A., Junior Carlton Club, Pall Mall, S.W.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

ALDRICH, Miss EMILY H., 335, Rialto-buildings, Chicago, 111.
Cox, MRS. ANDREW J., Meriden, Conn.

FRANKLAND, FREDERICK W., 346, Broadway, New York, N.Y.
GREER, W. R., c/o S. C. Loan and Trust Company, Charleston, S.C.
GRIFFIN, MRS. JOSEPHINE, 547, Dearborn-avenue, Chicago, 111.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held at the rooms of the Society,
19, Buckingham Street, W.C., on October 15th. The President took
the chair a few minutes after the commencement. There were also
present : — Professor Sidgwick, Colonel Hartley, Dr. R. Hodgson, Dr.

134 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1897.

A. Wallace, and Messrs. F. W. H. Myers, F. Podmore, Sydney C. Scott,
and H. Arthur Smith.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed as correct.

On the proposition of Professor Sidgwick, seconded by Mr. F. W. H.
Myers, Dr. Richard Hodgson was co-opted as a Member of the Council
in accordance with Article 27.

Ten new Associates were elected, and the election of five new
Associates of the American Branch was recorded.

It was agreed that, at his request, the name of Mr. F. C. S.
Schiller should be transferred from the list of the American Branch
to that of the English Society.

In addition to the death of Mr. R. H. Hutton, respecting whom a
notice appeared in the last number of the Journal, the Council had
to record with regret the decease of several other members of the
Society, among them being the Rev. Canon Elwyn, Mr. Edward
Maitland, — both of whom had belonged to the Society for many
years, — Justice Windeyer, of Sydney, and Dr. H. Winchester, who
had recently joined.

A present to the Library was on the table, for which a vote of
thanks was passed to the donor.

Various other matters having been disposed of, it was agreed that
the next meeting of the Council be held on Friday, November 5th, at
4.30 p.m., at 19, Buckingham Street, W.C.

CASES.

L. 1094. A* PS [A.B. 223.]

For the following case we are indebted to Dr. M. L. Holbrook,
Associate A.B.S.P.R. We hope to obtain further information con-
cerning the experience of Mr. McKinney of Dayton, and to ascertain,
if possible, more definitely how it was that Mr. Morse failed to receive
the first despatch sent to him from Watergap. The first series of
statements were arranged by myself.

Statement by R. H.

5, Boylston Place, Boston, Mass. , July 19th, 1897.

This morning I received two letters from Dr. M. L. Holbrook, of New
York, by the first delivery.

1. One of these is postmarked : "New York, N.Y., Jul 17, 11.30a.m. " ;
also "Boston, Mass. Jul 17, 8 p.m. 1897" ; also "Boston, Mass. Jul 18,
7 a.m. 1897."

Nov., i8«7.] Cases. 135

This envelope is also endorsed in pencil in Dr. Holbrook's handwriting :
"Dropped in box 21st St. and 4th Ave. at 10.45."

July 17 was a Saturday, and the letter arrived in Boston too late for
delivery on Saturday evening, and as there is no delivery on Sunday, its
delivery was delayed till this morning.

2. The other envelope is postmarked : " New York, N.Y., Jul 18,
7 p.m." and "Boston, Mass., July 19, 6 a.m."

The first envelope contains the two following documents : —

1.
10.35 a.m., Saturday, July 17th, 1897.

DEAR HODGSON, — Five minutes ago Mr. J. F. Morse, who has all his
life had dreams which were more or less verified later, came to my room and
said, " I believe my wife died last night, for I had a dream of a most
remarkable nature which indicates it. I shall be able to let you know soon,
for I shall get word at my office when I reach there. I will then send you
word." His wife is in a country place in Delaware Co., Pa. She is ill, but
he had no idea she would not live for months, as the enclosed letter of
July 15th will show, but she was ill and would be likely to decline slowly
and gradually.

I will get this off or in the mail before I hear any more.

Mr. Morse in his appearance looks like one who had just lost a dear
friend and is in a state of great mental depression with tears in his

eyes- '••••-• M. L. HOLBROOK.

Completed at 10.46.

P.S. — I had asked Mr. M. to let me know of any vivid dream before
fulfilment.

Astor House, Broadway, Barclay and Vesey Sts., New York,

July 15th, 1897.

DEAR DOCTOR, — I am pleased to inform you that Dr. Hurd consented to
take my wife. She reached there yesterday with her sister, and will stay
there until improved, perhaps many months. I am very thankful and under
obligation to you. ... j R MORSE

The second envelope contains the two following documents : —

New York, July 18th, 1897.

DEAR H., — The enclosed telegram seems to verify the dream of
Mr. Morse. I received it at 7.15 Saturday evening, July 17th, about nine
hours after I heard him state what I wrote you yesterday. As soon as I can
reasonably do so I will get, if possible, a full statement of the dream itself,
and any other information necessary to show he had had nothing to suggest
the death beyond a knowledge of her illness.

M. L. HOLBROOK.

136 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1897.

Delivered from 8 West 23rd St.

Number
35

Sent by
Jm

Rec'd by
B

paid

Check
MS 648

RECEIVED at the WESTERN UNION BUILDING, 195, Broadway, N. Y.,

July m/i, 1897.

Dated 2086, 3rd Ave., N. Y. 17.
To Dr. M. L. Holbrook.

Forty-six 46 East 21 Twenty first St. N. Y.

My wife died last night.

News kept from me to-day. j F MoMB<

[On the back is written in Dr. Holbrook's writing :]
Received at 7.15, July 17th, (Saturday) 1897. o tjo

The next letter explains the apparent discrepancy between certain
times noted by Dr. Holbrook.

New York, Tuesday, July 20tli, 1897.

DEAR HODGSON, — I notice that at foot of letter of mine of July 17th you
have copied and returned about the Morse dream, I say finished 10.46, and
that I marked dropping the same into letter box 10.45. The first marking
(10.46) I took from my clock, and the second from my watch. My clock is
generally faster than my watch, often five or six minutes. It is one of those
spring clocks that goes too fast when freshly wound up. I remember it was
about five minutes ahead on that day, and I ought to have marked the letter
by the same timepiece, but I don't see as it makes much difference. I went
out and mailed it as soon after finishing as I could. It took of course a few

moments- M. L. HOLBROOK.

On the next day Dr. Holbrook wrote again as follows : —

8 p.m. 46, E. 21st St., New York, July 21st, 1897.
DEAR HODGSON, — The enclosed letter from Mr. Morse seems likely to
complicate and make still more interesting this case of his. . . Who this
brother is I do not know, but presume it is a brother-in-law instead of
brother. . . I suppose I better write to Dr. Hurd at whose Sanitarium
Mrs. Morse died. . . It seems to me strange they did not telegraph till
so long a time after she passed away. ... ML HOLBROOK

The following is the enclosed letter to which Dr. Holbrook refers : —
Hotel Beckel, Dayton, Ohio, July 20th, 1897.

DR. M. L. HOLBROOK, — DEAR SIR, — I telegraphed you last Saturday
evening when I learned of my wife's death. I write now to relate some-
thing as remarkable as what I told you.

Nov., 1897.] Cases. 137

I arrived here last night with my wife's body. When I met a brother
who resides here, he said, " I knew Carrie was dead." " How is that ?" I
replied. He answered, " A few nights ago I had a very vivid dream that
startled me. I saw her gliding out of my room into the hall, and as she
passed through the door she turned and looked at me and said, ' Don't you
know me, Wil ? ' "

Now this is very remarkable. This man did not know how sick a
woman she was (nor for that matter none of the rest realised it fully) and he
had not been thinking of her, had not in fact written to her or heard from
her for some time.

I think it is beyond doubt that in sickness or death the spirit leaves the
body and goes to its own.

This affliction goes hard with me, as having no children, my wife was all
and everything to me, but these phenomena of dreams and visions, of which
I have experienced a good deal that is remarkable, interest me so much that
1 take a little time from my sorrow to write you of the remarkable dream of
my wife's brother, and it will no doubt interest you. . . .

J. F. MORSE.

[Received in envelope dated Dayton, Ohio, Jul. 20, 3 p.m. :97. Received
by Dr. Holbrook, 7 p.m., July 21].

The next letter concerns the independent evidence for the death
of Mrs. Morse : —

New York, July 24th, 1897.

DEAK DR. HODGSON, — . . . I mail you two papers in one wrapper
both having marked notices of the death at Watergap, Pa. , on Friday, of
Mrs. Morse, which I thought you would like to have in case we get more
about the dream I can do nothing more till I see Mr. Morse, and I don't

know when that will be. . . n/r T tr

M. L. HOLBROOK.

The two papers which Dr. Holbrook sent are the Dayton Evening
Herald tor July 21st, 1897, and the Dayton Daily Journal for the
same date. Both papers give a brief account of the illness and death
of Mrs. Morse. The following is an extract from the account in the
Dayton Daily Journal : —

MRS. CAROLINE L. MORSE.

Mrs. Caroline L. Morse, daughter of the late Wm. J. McKinney, of this
city, born in Dayton, fifty-three years ago, was buried in Woodland
yesterday. She died at Delaware Watergap, Pa., last Friday.

Deceased graduated from Cooper Seminary, this city, under Dr. Victor
L. Conrad, and a few years later married and moved East. She had been
quite sick for some time, but her family and friends did not realise her
danger until a few hours before she passed away. She was conscious up to
the last, and died with a sweet smile upon her face for brothers and sisters
who were around her bedside.

138 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1897.

The next letter contains further information concerning the
dream of Mr. Morse : —

46, E. 21st St., New York, September 1st, 1897.

DEAR DR. HODGSON, — I have had a conversation with Mr. Morse about
his dream regarding the death of his wife. The dream appears to have been
symbolical. He dreamed he was dressed in mourning and taking a long
journey on the cars. He felt when he awoke that it related to his wife,
and that she was already dead. About a month previously he had another
dream in which he saw his wife come to his bedside with a clock in her
hands. She seemed to take off the hands and the face, and to show the
works inside all broken and out of order. This dream did not impress him
much, but now he looks on it as premonitory of her death. Mrs. Morse
was buried in Dayton, Ohio, and he did make a long railroad journey to
attend to the burial.

Mr. Morse states emphatically that he had had no message from
Dr. Hurd or any one concerning his wife's death before he saw me ; but he
says his brother-in-law, who lives in same house, got a message shortly after
he left the house next morning. His brother-in-law is Mr. — McKinney.
It seems that another brother-in-law and sister-in-law were with Mrs. Morse
when she died, as the enclosed letter from Dr. Hurd shows. This letter
also shows that a telegram was sent to Mr. McKinney in New York, and
this agrees with what Mr. Morse states, but the question of telegrams seems
rather mixed, and I have not had time to unravel it.

I enclose Dr. Kurd's letter. I wrote to Mr. McKinney of Dayton, a
third brother-in-law, regarding his seeing a phantom of his sister about the
same time, but have had no reply. ... M L HoLBROOK>

The following letter is apparently in reply to the inquiries made by
Dr. Holbrook : —

Water Gap Sanitarium, Minsi, Monroe Co., Pa.,

July 26th, 1897.

M. L. HOLBROOK, M.D., — DEAR DOCTOR, — I am very confident that if
Mrs. Morse had come to us when they first wrote, and had not gone to
Philadelphia but come to us, we would have saved her life. On her arrival
from Philadelphia, she was very much exhausted ; had persisted in riding,
sitting up and walking ; would not allow herself to be helped as she should
have been. She went to her bed and scarcely sat up any after ; gradually
grew weaker, pulse became rapid, temperature developed. The last 24
hours her pulse ran from 120 to 135 and 140 ; slept a good deal ; did not
wish any food. Her fingers and nails, as well as her toes, seemed to have
no arterial blood,— dark blood settled under the nails. This I noticed the
next morning after she arrived. She came on Wednesday, arriving a little
after one o'clock, with Mr. McKinney and her sister. She steadily failed.
On Friday morning, noting no improvement in the temperature or general
strength, and the heart-beat being from 135 to 140, I told her sister that it
seemed impossible for her to hold out very long unless there was a marked

Nov., 1897.] Cases. 139

improvement within a few hours, and I told her I thought Mrs. Morse could
not live more than 24 hours. They decided to telegraph at once, and did so to
Mr. McKinney to New York, about nine o'clock. Mr. McKinney told me
on his arrival at 4 '04 that he tried to rind Mr. Morse, but after trying in
several directions he failed. He telegraphed to him after getting to Water
Gap. They had no word from him before their departure. She passed
away at 9.15 in the evening, peacefully, and without a struggle, though
half-an-hour before suffered considerably with pain about the heart. The
body was taken from the house to the undertaker's before twelve o'clock,
and the friends left for New York with the body the next morning, leaving
here about nine o'clock and taking the 12 '01 train from Stroudsburg.
Mr. McKinney telegraphed again to Mr. Morse Saturday morning about
7.30 to his home and business addresses. . . .

F. WILSON HURD,
S.

[A.B. 224.J

The following statement of experiences by Miss Luke was sent to
us by Dr. R. Osgood Mason, Associate A.B S.P.R., and author of
Telepathy and The Subliminal Self (a review of which will appear in
the next number of our Proceedings). See also the article by Dr.
Mason in the Journal S.P.R. for December, 1894. Dr. Mason wrote
on January 9th, 1896, concerning Miss Luke : "I have two or three
recent dreams or night visions and their fulfilment of which she told
me only a few days since ; and which can be dated and substantiated."
The statement was finally sent apparently in September, 1896.

Miss Mary Luke, 202, Hudson-street, New York City, the percipient in
the following cases of veridical dreams, has been very well known to me for
more than fifteen years, I having been the attending physician in the
family during that time. Her own health, however, has been almost
perfect ; she is free from all hysterical or nervous symptoms ; in fact, I
have hardly had occasion to prescribe for her during this whole period.
She is a busy, energetic, self-reliant, but very kind-hearted woman, now
nearly 40 years of age, though looking at least ten years younger. She is
unmarried.

She has from childhood been an inveterate somnambulist, walking almost
every night, until two years ago when I hypnotised her and suggested that
she should not again leave her bed in her sleep. The effect was prompt
and decided. She has never since that time walked nor even left her bed
while asleep.

She is exceedingly impressionable, and seldom fails to receive definite
and true ideas and impressions regarding people who come into her presence
or with whom she sits— a faculty which she often exercises, but never for
any remuneration. On one occasion a few years ago she varied from this
rule, for charity. Being on a visit in a distant country village where she
was quite unknown, during a church fair she was asked to occupy the gipsy

140 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1897.

tent and tell fortunes, a character for which her personal appearance as well
as her peculiar psychical endowment especially fitted her. The first day she
had the usual share of patronage, but on the second day — the accuracy of
her delineations having become the talk of the town — there was a constant
stream of visitors to her tent, and more than 300 dollars were realised for
the charity.

She has had a large number of veridical dreams, but she was so ridiculed
by her family on account of them that she seldom told them, especially
not before their fulfilment, so they are not available for the Society for
Psychical Research.

Within the past two years, however, since I have known something of
her psychic experiences, the two dreams here related have occurred, and
fortunately they were related before the events were known. The first I
have named : —

L. 1095. Ae PS I.— THE ROBBERY.

and I will give it substantially in her own language, as I took it down while
she related it. I will premise that she occupies a three-storey and basement
house. Her sister, Mrs. S., with her family, occupies the third floor ; she
rents the second floor to lodgers, and uses the first floor and basement for
her own business. The second floor front, over her parlour, was occupied
by a man and his wife, named L., who had been with her six months ; they
seemed very pleasant people, and she had no occasion to mistrust their
honesty. The back room on the same floor was occupied by Mr. B., who
had been her tenant for six years.

She goes on to say : —

On Wednesday, August 28th, 1895, I had been absent all day ; I came in
late in the evening and went directly to bed. I noticed nothing out of the
way excepting that I missed a small and rather pretty alarm clock from the
parlour mantel ; I supposed, however, that my lodger Mr. B. had taken it,
as he sometimes did if he wished to be aroused at a particular hour, and I
thought no more about it.

That night I dreamed or rather seemed to see Mr. and Mrs. L.'s room in
great disorder ; Mr. and Mrs. L. were gone and everything belonging to
them, and also everything of mine which was valuable was gone, and the
house was robbed of valuables generally. The scene of the room was very
vivid and exact.

In the morning I went directly up to my sister's apartment and asked
her, "When have you seen Mrs. L. ?" She replied, "She was up here
with me at three o'clock yesterday afternoon ; she brought up some refresh-
ments and was particularly agreeable." I said at once, "I dreamed last
night that she had gone and had robbed the house of its valuables, and had
left the room in great disorder. " My sister had not seen either of them nor
heard any sound in their room after three o'clock. My sister, who had
always been inclined to laugh at my dreams, exclaimed, " Your dreams are
so queer, M., I cannot help feeling anxious." I went down to my own apart-
ment on the first floor and listened for sounds of people moving overhead,

Nov., 1897.] Cases. 141

but all was silent. I then went up to their room and rapped repeatedly, but
got no reply. I then used my duplicate key and opened the doer. The
room was unoccupied and in great disorder ; all their own property
together with everything of value belonging to me had disappeared, and the
mom presented the exact appearance in every respect that I had seen in my
dream.

An examination of the house directly afterwards showed that they had
taken all my jewellery and trinkets and the little clock which I had missed
the evening before. They had also taken a suit of new clothes and an
umbrella from the room of their neighbour B. on the same floor.

Miss Luke adds : —

This is a perfectly correct account of my dream and its fulfilment.

MARY LUKE.

Mrs. Stallings' Statement.
202, Hudson Street, New York, September 7th, 1896.

My sister Mary, known in Dr. Mason's statement as M.L., came upstairs
on Thursday morning, August 29th, 1895, and said to me, " When have you
seen Mrs. L. ?" I said, "Not since three o'clock yesterday. She was
up here then, brought some refreshments and was very agreeable." Mary
then said, " I dreamed last night that she had gone and had stripped the
house of everything valuable. I saw the room empty and in disorder —
everything valuable was taken away, both hers and mine. I have not heard
a sound from them overhead this morning." I said, "Your dreams are so
queer, Mary, I can't help feeling anxious." She went downstairs and soon
after went into the room and found it empty ; everything valuable was
taken. Afterwards it was found that she had taken my sister's jewellery and
trinkets and also a suit of clothes and an umbrella from a lodger on the

same floor.

HENRIETTA STALLINGS.

In reply to inquiries, Dr. Mason wrote : —

New York, October 4f/i, 1896.

MY DEAR DR. HODGSON, — . . . Regarding tracing the robbery, Miss
Luke went to the office of the detective force, where she was treated so
indifferently because there was "nothing in it" for them, that she surprised
them by giving them a piece of her mind and walked out. Afterwards,
fearing she would make the matter public, they sent two or three times
offering to take the matter up, but she would have nothing more to do with

them.

R. OSGOOD MASON.

Dr. Mason's statement continues : —
The second dream I call : —
L. 1096. An PS II.— THE Two WEDDINGS.
I relate it very much in her own language : —

On Wednesday, November 27th, 1895, the day before Thanksgiving, I
went out to Coscoh, in Connecticut, about 30 miles from New York, to spend

142 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1897.

Thanksgiving with a friend. On Thanksgiving day I returned to Brooklyn
(still seven or eight miles from home) to spend the night with my friend
Mrs. La Forge.

During the night I dreamed that I was in the church of St. John in
Vanck Street sitting in a pew the situation of which I very well remember.
It is a pleasure to me to attend Church weddings for the sake of the music
and pleasant surroundings. After waiting a little the organ commenced
playing and presently the wedding procession came up the aisle. I enjoyed
the music, flowers, and pretty dresses. The ceremony was performed and
the bridal party and company gradually left the church.

After a little time I also got up and left the church. Just as I was
leaving 1 met a friend who said tome, "There is to be another wedding
later ; wait and see that too." Accordingly I went back and took my seat
again. Considerable time seemed to have passed when again the church was
illuminated — the music commenced, another wedding party arrived and
walked up the aisle and again the impressive ceremony was performed.
With one of these weddings— and I cannot tell which — there was connected
the idea of some social affair — a reception — and it seemed to me a little queer
and I associated it with the idea of a communion service carried on in a jolly
sort of way.

I had always been accustomed to associate dreaming of a wedding with
misfortune and death in the family, and when I awoke, this dream of two
weddings gave me great uneasiness, and I associated it with sickness and
death in my sister's family, although I had left them all well on Wednesday.
I at once told my dream to my hostess and also told her of my apprehension ;
and I took a much earlier train back to the city than 1 had planned to do. I
hurried home in a state of great anxiety — every little delay causing me great
impatience ; but finding no crape on the door I took heart, went in and
called up stairs to my sister H., " Are you all right here ? " She replied,
''Yes, certainly. Why are you so excited?" I then went up to her
apartment and commenced relating my dream. My sister's amazement
became more and more manifest as 1 went on, and at the close she exclaimed,
" What a strange thing ! There were two weddings at St. John's Church on
Wednesday afternoon and I attended them both. They were very pretty
weddings with music and flowers, and after the last one the wedding party
went to the parlour of the Infirmary (close by the church) and held a
reception."

Miss Luke confirms as follows : —

This is a true statement of my dream and the actual circumstances

connected with it.

MAKY LUKE.

Dr. Mason adds : —

Here the dream occurred on the night of the day following the actual
events, but it is certain that no intelligence of the events in any way reached

the dreamer.

U. 0. M.

Nov., 1897.] Cases. 143

Mrs. Stallings and Mrs. La Forge give their accounts as follow : —

Mrs. Stallings' Statement.
202, Hudson Street, New York, September 6th, 1896.

On Wednesday, November, 1895, the day before Thanksgiving, I
went to the meeting of the Church Sewing Society of St. John's Church in
Varick-street. Just as we were through and about to go home a friend said
to me, "There is to be a wedding in the church soon — let us wait and see
it." So we concluded to wait and in the meantime had some refreshments.
Presently the wedding party arrived and entered the church. We followed
and witnessed the ceremony.

After it was finished my friend remarked, "There is to be another
wedding this evening. Come down and we will see that too." I said I
would. Accordingly I went to the church again in the evening. The church
was brilliantly lighted — there was music and flowers. After the ceremony
there was a reception by the bride and groom in the parlors of the Infirmary
close by the church. We did not go in.

On Friday morning following I was much surprised to hear my sister
calling from the lower hall, " H., are you all right up there ? " I replied,
" Yes, what is the matter that you are so excited ?" My sister then carne
upstairs and related her dream of the two weddings just as related in Dr.
Mason's statement. I was amazed and replied, "Sure enough there were
two weddings in the church on Wednesday afternoon and evening just as
you describe. I saw them both, and there was a reception after the

last one."

HENRIETTA STALLINGS.

Mrs. La Forge's Statement.

63, Debevoise Place, Brooklyn, N.Y., Augwt, 1896.

M. L. came to my house in Brooklyn, on Thanksgiving day, November
28th, 1895, and spent the night with me. Early in the morning she
aroused me saying she had had a dream which greatly troubled her. She
said she dreamed that she attended two weddings at St. John's Church
in one afternoon. She said she always associated dreams of weddings with
sickness and death. She further said, "How dreadful it would be if
anything should happen to the children,"— meaning her sister's children —
"and H. would not know where to address me." She was much disturbed
about her dream. She took an early breakfast, and started at once for home.

EMMA J. LA FORGE.

Dr. Mason writes concerning the actual occurrence of the two
weddings : —

New York, May 20th, 1896.

To-day I went to St. John's Church in Varick-street, and saw the sexton,
Mr. Watson. He kindly showed me the marriage register. Two weddings
were registered on Wednesday, November 27th, 1895, one at 4 o'clock, the
other at 8 in the evening.

144 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1897.

The sexton remembers that there was music at both weddings and there
was a reception at the parlors of the Infirmary directly after the last one.

R. OSGOOD MASON.
L. 1097. A" PS

III. — THE ALBUQUERQUE DREAM.

Nine years ago M. L. had a friend in New Mexico whom I will call G. ,
from whom she had not heard for months, and of whose surroundings she
knew absolutely nothing.

One night she dreamed or, as she expresses it, saw this friend in
Albuquerque. She was, as it seemed to her, present in the room where he
was, and saw everything in it with the same degree of distinctness as if she
were actually present. She noticed the matting on the floor, the willow-
ware furniture, the bed, rocking chair, foot stool and other articles. He
was talking with a companion, a person of very striking appearance, Avhom
she also minutely observed as regarded personal appearance, dress and
position in the room. He was saying to this companion that he was about
to start for New York for the purpose of interesting capitalists in a system
of irrigation which he had proposed. His companion was laughing
sarcastically and ridiculing the whole scheme. He persisted, and the
conversation was animated— almost bitter.

Three weeks later, early one morning, she dreamed that this man was in
New York. She saw him coming up the street leading to her house and
saw her father go forward to meet him. At breakfast she told her father
her dream, and they also talked freely about her dream or vision of three
weeks before.

After breakfast her father sat upon the front stoop reading the morning
paper and M. L. went about some work. Suddenly she heard her father call
out in a startled sort of way : — " Mary, sure enough here comes G.! " She
stepped to the window and there was G. coming up the street and her
father going forward to meet him, exactly as she had seen him in her dream.
He had just arrived from the West, and had come for the very purpose
indicated by his conversation in M. L.'s vision. After some general
conversation M. L. said to him : — "By the way, who was that remarkable
person you were talking with about this journey three weeks ago?"
mentioning the night of her dream. With evident surprise he said : —
" What do you mean 1 "

She then related the whole dream just as she had experienced it, even to
the minutest details. His astonishment was profound. He declared that
the details which she gave could never have been so exactly described except
by some one actually present, and with some annoyance he accused her of
playing the spy.

The above account was taken down from Miss Luke's recital, suppress-
ing some particulars, . . . which she, M. L., did not care to have
published. I thought the fact of the dreams having been told to the
father was a point. Unfortunately the father is dead.

R. OSGOOD MASON.

Nov., i8i»7.] Cases. 145

Dr. Mason writes further : —

New York, October 4th, 1896.

MY DEAR, Dn. HOIKJSON, — In answer to your enquiries I have secured
Miss Luke's signature to the Albuquerque dream. T had read it over to
her carefully after it was written out, and she pronounced it correct.

Miss Luke has neither seen nor heard of G. since he left N.Y. after she
related her dream to him. There were circumstances connected with the
" companion " mentioned in the dream which he would not have liked Miss
Luke to know. . . .

R. OSGOOU MASON.

Miss Luke states : —

The dream relating to my friend in Albuquerque occurred about nine
years ago. I have read Dr. Mason's account as given above, and it is
perfectly correct and as I related it to him.

MARY LUKE.

L. 1098. A« P* [A.B. 225.]

Mrs. Jane B. Gritting, Associate A.B.S.P.R., has recorded another
experience by Miss Luke, the percipient in the three cases given above.
(Mrs. Grifting sent us an account of a telepathic experience between
members of her own family, — printed in the Journal S.P.R. for
December, 1895.) Mrs. Griffing stated in a letter to me of April
15th, 1896 :—

I have had a long and serious illness, typhoid-malarial fever, beginning
nearly the first of January, though the fever symptoms were not decided
until February 8th. I am still weak and miserable. My poor daughter,
too, is very ill. We have been slowly poisoned by the unsanitary conditions
of a city flat. [Miss Luke's experience was in connection with this illness.]

New York, April Uth, 1896.

Miss Luke had a dream early in the morning of February 8th concerning
us. She seemed to visit us, was in my daughter's room, which was changed
to another part of the flat. My daughter and I were both dressed in deep
black, and there was a general air of gloom. She (Miss L.) went into a
hypnotic sleep, for the purpose of my learning something I wished to know.
As she awoke, she heard me say to my son, " Oh, if I had only known this
beforehand, how much I would have been saved."

She made a note of the dream and the date. She did not know of my
illness for several days, and it was two weeks or more before she knew when
it began. Then she came to see me, and showed me her memorandum of
the dream and the date, before she knew the date of the beginning of the
fever. I had been ill since January 1st, but able to be up, was not obliged
to remain in bed more than a day or two. The first week in February I
seemed better, and went out the 7th. During the forenoon of the 8th I felt
much better, and began some sewing. It was afternoon when the attack of
fever came, so she could not have received any telepathic impression of

146 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1897.

anything wrong with us. Then, as to the special feature of the dream, my
saying, "If I had only known," etc., that was perfectly true. If we had
known that my daughter's continued illness and my increasing ill health
were due to causes here, we would have gone into the country. So in her
dream Miss Luke seemed to have a premonition of what followed, and also
the misfortune being one that could have been prevented " had I only

known'" JANE R. GRIFFING.

In reply to inquiries Mrs. Griffing writes : —

729, Amsterdam Ave., New York, April 18th, 1896.

DEAR DR. HODGSON, — . . . I send Miss Luke's statement about her
dream (she was here yesterday). I cannot send her note made at the time,
as it was on the back of a business card, only the date and one or two
details ; she does not preserve such things. It is only recently that Dr.
Mason and I have succeeded in getting her to make any record of her
experiences. She has had some wonderful visions, etc., (veridical) but kept
no record of them. She promises us now to keep them written up at the
time in a note book. I believe Dr. Mason has lately verified and written up,
probably for the S.P.R., two recent remarkable dreams. . . . When
she told me her dream no one else was present. It was while I was still
very ill, but I made a note of it on a slip of paper, which was, however,
lost. I do not think she mentioned the dream to any one before coming to
see me ; she is not sure, but her family are strongly prejudiced against
everything of the kind. I might have kept the card when she showed it to
me, but did not think of it. ... JANE R GMPFINO<

P.S. — Miss Luke's letter, telling me that she had had an interesting
dream about us, was not preserved. For a month I was too ill to think
much of those matters.

Miss Luke's account is as follows : —

202, Hudson Street, New York City.

[Received April 20th, 1896. R.H.]

Early in the morning of February 8th I dreamed of being at Mrs.
Griffing's. I was in her daughter's room which seemed to be in another part
of their flat. Both Mrs. and Miss Griffing were dressed in deep mourning.
Mrs. Griffing hypnotised me in order to learn something concerning her
affairs. As I awoke I heard Mrs. Griffing say to her son, "Oh, if I had
only known this beforehand, how much I could have been saved ! "

I made a memorandum of the date, etc., of the dream, to show Mrs.
Griffing. I had not seen her for some time, did not hear of her illness until
several days after the dream, and did not know when the fever began until
I called there, and after I told Mrs. Griffing and showed the memorandum.
It was only written on the back of a business card, to keep the date. I
wrote to Mrs. Griffing when I heard of her illness, and mentioned that I had
had a dream about her and her family.

MARY J. LUKE.

Nov., 1897.] Correspondence. 147

In reply to further inquiries Mrs. Griffing writes, in a letter of
April 24th, 1896 :—

I never hypnotised Miss Luke, but Dr. Mason has many times. He
treated her in that way for sler.p walkiruj, which caused her much trouble and
affected her health badly. Cured her entirely. [See the account by Dr.
Mason, given above under A. B. 224. — ED.]

CORRESPONDENCE.

P. 160. 33, Bloomsbury Square, W.C., October 19th, [1897].

DR. R. Hoimsox.— DEAR SIR, — In your editorial of this month you
appeal to members for co-operation in giving information of experiences
which it is the aim of the Society to investigate.

The following experience of my own, last month, may be of too common
occurrence for notice, and I should not have forwarded it but for your
editorial.

I was a passenger in the ill-fated train which ran off the rails near
Mayfield, on Wednesday, September 1st (last). The train fell 60 feet
down an embankment, resulting in wrecked carriages, shaken and injured
passengers, and in the instantaneous death of the engine driver.

On the previous Friday night my wife had a dream which she related to
me the following day. She dreamed that she and I were in a railway
accident. She thought there was a crash and then the carriages fell over.
She then looked about for means of escape and saw the window overhead
and endeavoured to get out by it. She did not remember the actual getting
out, but found herself outside and saw several injured persons and one or
more dead. I thought no more about the dream until the following
Wednesday, when I was falling down the embankment. The first thing I
said to myself as I felt the shock of the carriage turning over on its side
was — " Here is the dream !" and it was further impressed on me as I looked
about to see how I could extricate myself and saw the window overhead,
just as my wife had described. I got out by the window, and the first thing
I saw was the dead body of the engine driver.

My wife was to have accompanied me, but was prevented at the last
moment, and, strange to say, the dream did not cross the mind of either
of us. -I am, dear Sir, faithfully yours, RICHARD STAPLEY.

[The accident is described in The Westminster Gazette of September 1st,
1897, and fuller details are given in its issue of September 2nd, from which
I extract the account which follows. The accident happened on the London,
Brighton, and South Coast Railway near Mayfield. — ED.

"Yesterday the 8.18 from Eastbourne, bound for the Wells, left in the
ordinary course, calling at Hailsham and other stations. After leaving
Heathfield the line describes a series of curves, and it was when within a

148 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1897.

mile or so of Mayfield station that the accident occurred. The line at this
point runs on an embankment which is rather steeper on one side than the
other, and from some cause — the recent heavy rains may possibly have
undermined the permanent way, although this theory seems doubtful — the
train, which seems to have been proceeding at a fair rate of speed, left
the rails.

The engine went over the embankment on the right, two carriages were
left lying across the permanent way, and, the couplings breaking, the
remaining four carriages were precipitated down the embankment on the
left of the line. The engine lay on its side vomiting sparks and smoke, and
near it was the body of James McKinley, the driver, residing at 44,
Commercial Road, Eastbourne, who is said to have jumped from the engine
when he saw what had happened. He appears to have been killed on the
spot. His fireman was more fortunate, but he was dreadfully shaken and
knocked about, whilst the guard, George Hyam, of Brighton, had his head
cut and his back seriously injured."

Then follows a list of thirty persons who were injured, and among these
is mentioned Mr. Stapley.

"Of the remainder of the travellers in the train — some forty or fifty in
number - there seems to be no serious hurt to report, although their escape
is most remarkable."]

In reply to inquiries, Mrs. Stapley writes as follows : —

33, Bloomsbury Square, W.C., October 20th, 1897.

DR. R. HODGSON, — DEAR SIR, — My dream on the night of August 27th,
with its prevision of the railway accident on the following Wednesday,
September 1st, was so exactly as related by my husband that I need not
recapitulate it, but will merely add a few particulars.

I seldom dream, and this one made a vivid impression on me at the time ;
yet after relating it to my husband the next day, I completely forgot it until
his return a few hours after the accident. I was surprised at his entrance,
and he .said only, "Your dream!" Instantly it returned to me, and I
exclaimed in great agitation, "Oh! are you much hurt 1" Three friends
were with me at the time and heard this, and one of them has appended her
signature. Our place in Sussex is on the line of railway where the accident
occurred, and my husband is in the habit of going to London by that train
once or twice a week during our summer residence there.

I have never dreamed of a railway accident before, nor has my husband
or myself ever been in one. — I am, most truly yours,

ANNIE E. STAPLEY.

Signature of friend : F. LINDER DUNN, 33, Bloomsbury Square.

[October 21st, 1897. — In a conversation with Mrs. Stapley yesterday I
learned that she has had two or three other experiences of a different type
which were probably veridical, but they occurred too long ago to be made of
evidential value. Mrs. Stapley also informed me that her husband was not
appreciably injured in the accident. — R.H.]

No. CXLIV.-Voi,. VIII. DKCEMBKB, 18!>7.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

CONTENTS. PAOK

New Members and Associates 14f>

Meeting of the Council 14»

General Meeting 150

Correspondence : —

The Divining Rod and Unconscious Muscular Action 151

" Faces in the Dark " 158

Criticism of Cases Reported in the Journal .. .. 159

Case 161

Review : -Dr. Goldwin Smith's "Guesses at the Riddle of Existence." By F. \V. H. Myers 163 •

NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

GARET-CHARLES, GEORGES, The Nook, Titchfield-rd., Regent's-pk., N.W.
LIBRARIAN, Grosvenor Library, Buffalo, New York, U.S.A.
"MfiLLOR, Miss EMILY, The Cottage Hospital, Wellington, Somerset.
Ogilvy, Mrs. N. Hamilton, Biel, Prestonkirk, East Lothian, N.B.
PEDLEY, CHARLES HERBERT, Winter-ley House, near Crewe.
TEMPLE, REGINALD W., Ashley House, Shaftesbury-avenue, W.C.
Woods, John F., M.D., Hoxton House Asylum, London, N.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.
BARBER, REV. GEORGE E., Maryborough, N.Y.

BARKER, MRS. C. F., Ellis-ave. and Oakwood-boulevard, Chicago, 111.
BARKER, Miss JENNY M., 479, 4th-street, Manistee, Mich.
FORMAN, LAWRENCE C., 25, Dunster Hall, Cambridge, Mass.
FROST, JON. B., 75, Peachtree-street, Atlanta, Ga.
RINN, J. F., 178, Reade-street, New York, N.Y.
STREET, EDGAR L., 13, West 102nd-street, New York, N.Y.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held at the rooms of the Society,
19, Buckingham Street, W.C., on November 5th. Dr. A. Wallace was

150 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 189 .

voted to the chair. There were also present : — Dr. R. Hodgson, and
Messrs. F. W. H. Myers, F. Podmore, and H. Arthur Smith

The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed as correct.

Two new Members and live new Associates were elected ; and
the election of seven new Associates of the American Branch was
recorded.

A present to the Library was on the table, for which a vote of
thanks was passed to the donor.

It was resolved that, subsequently to the 28th of January already
arranged, General Meetings be held on the following dates in 1898 : —
March llth, 8.30 p.m.; April 22nd, 4 p.m.; May 20th, 8.30p.m.;
and June 24th, 4 p.m.

Several other matters having been disposed of, it was agreed that
the next meeting of the Council be held on Friday, December 10th,
at the Westminster Town Hall, at 3 p.m., previous to the General
Meeting at 4 p.m.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 88th General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, November 5th, at 8.30 p.m. ; DR. A.
WALLACE in the chair.

DR. RICHARD HODGSON gave an address on the " Later Investiga-
tions of Trance Phenomena manifested through Mrs. Piper." He began
by giving a brief outline-history of the earlier trances of Mrs. Piper,
1884-1891, referring to the articles in Proceedings S.P.R., Parts XVII.
and XXI. This might be regarded as the first of three stages, and
during this first stage the chief "control" was the personality known as
Phinuit. The second stage represented roughly the years 1892-1895,
during which had occurred the development of automatic writing in
connection with Mrs. Piper's trance, and strong evidence pointing to
identity had been obtained from what purported to be the " spirit " of
a young man, whom the lecturer called by the name of George Pelham.
Most of this came through the automatic writing, by means of which,
also, many other " communications " were given from the friends and
relatives of various sitters, though Phinuit still was habitually present
and used the voice more or less. Illustrations were given of some of
these communications, including some incidents in connection with
statements made later by the "spirit" of Kate Field. The third stage
represented the period 1896-7. During this period Mrs. Piper's trance
passed under the guidance of what purported to be the persons claimed
by the late Rev. W. Stainton Moses as his "spirit-guides," and

DEO., 185»7.) Correspondence. 151

Phinuit ceased to manifest. The consideration of this last stage, and
of the significance of the whole series of manifestations, Dr. Hodgson
reserved for a later address, to be given on December 10th. He
stated, however, his opinion that although there were many difficulties
to be explained, and much confusion and obscurity in many of the
communications, they did emanate from the " spirits " that claimed
to be communicating. Photographs were shown of Mrs. Piper, taken
before and during and after trance.

MR. H. L. BEVAN put an inquiry concerning the belief beforehand
of the sitters who had had experiences with Mrs. Piper, and pointed
out that the lecturer had not made any reference to this consideration.

The lecturer said that this was different in different cases, and
instanced the " Howards," friends of " George Pelham," who would
have scoffed at matters psychical prior to their experiences with
Mrs. Piper.

MR. MYERS emphasised this point, referring to his personal know-
ledge of the Howards, and to the complete reversal that Mr. Howard
had undergone from an absolutely disbelieving attitude to one of
acceptance of the phenomena in question.

PROFESSOR N ORRIS said that he agreed with the lecturer in his
conclusions that we were, in these phenomena, dealing with ultra-
sensuous agencies. He had been a student of these matters from
the year 1852, and in June, 1865, became himself the subject of these
" automatisms." His own experiences did not lead to the sanguine
view that we were on the point of settling the vexed question of
personal or individual identity; — on the other hand the feasibility
of demonstrating the human character of these " influences " on a
psycho-physiological basis appeared to be highly probable.

Several other questions were asked and answered, and the meeting
then adjourned.

CORRESPONDENCE.

[The Editor is not, responsible for opinions expressed by Correspondents.]

THE DIVINING Ron AND UNCONSCIOUS MUSCULAR ACTION.

Unconscious muscular action is now generally accepted as the explanation
of certain phenomena which had by many been previously attributed to the
direct action of some " occult " force. But is not a more exact definition
required of what is meant by unconscious muscular action, and a clearer idea
desirable of the limits within which it may reasonably be supposed to act ?

Professor W. F. Barrett has made an important addition to the literature
of the Society for Psychical Research in his work "On the so-called

152 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1897.

Divining Rod " (Proceedings, Part XXXII). In dealing with the causes of
the phenomena, — the reality of which he considers established, — Professor
Barrett says : — " Few will dispute the proposition that the motion of the
forked twig is due to unconscious muscular action " (p. 243) ; and again he
says : — "Assuming the actual motion of the rod to be caused by involuntary
muscular action . . " (p. 254). From these two sentences, we are led to
the conclusion that Professor Barrett looks upon "unconscious", as
distinguished from conscious muscular action, as an adequate explanation
of the movements of the divining rod. The question may, however, fairly be
asked— does this explanation cover all the evidence adduced by Professor
Barrett himself ?

Nine of the cases brought forward in Part XXXII. of the Proceeding*
seem entitled to form a group by themselves. Some other similar cases are
included among those enumerated on page 243 ; but these are sufficient for
the present purpose. These nine cases are : —

I. — " Even the President of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall,
Mr. J. D. Enys, F.G.S., is not a scoffer ; on the contrary he himself is an
amateur dowser, and in a recent letter, writing from Penryn, Cornwall, Mr.
Enys states : — ' I have tried it [dowsing for water] often. . . . On one
occasion I cut a small slight rod and held it till I came to the place [where
underground water existed], when it always acted by turning. On this
occasion I was able to hold the rod, but it broke short off in front of my
hands, and did so a second time in the same place ' " (p. 7).

II. — From a case sent by Miss Grantham, daughter of Judge Grantham :
— " At two spots the point of the twig turned right up, exactly reversing its
previous position ; in fact so strong was its impulse to point upwards, that
we found that unless Mr. B. [the Rev. J. Blunt] relaxed his hold the twig
broke off near his fingers " (p. 26).

III. — Mr. Percy A. Clive writes in reference to some experiments made
on his estate at Whitfield : — " When Mullins held my wrists, and I held the
twig over running water, it twisted round in my hands with such force that
when I held it tight it broke " (p. 35).

IV.— The Rev. Martin R. Knapp, M.A., Vicar of Holy Trinity,
Dalston, writes: -"My builder, who came from Bath, was very sceptical
about the whole thing. Three or four of us who were on the spot tried to
see if the twigs would ' play up ' with us. We were unsuccessful till this
man tried his hand, scoffing the while. But directly that he came to the
spots the dowser had found, the twig showed vigorous signs of animation.
When his hand was being twisted in his efforts to keep the twig steady, I
cried to him to hold fast, with the result that the twig twisted itself into
two pieces " (pp. 37-38).

V.—" Lady Milbanke says [in a letter to Dr. C. Hutton, F.R.S.] a large
party attended to watch the gyrations of the rod, which in spite of the man's
hands being stationary, twisted round so energetically when he stood over a
spring that the rod was broken." This man was a peasant in Provence
(p. 41).

DKC., 1897.] Correspondence. 153

VI. — Dr. Hutton, F.R.S., the distinguished mathematician, thus
describes the movements of the rod in Lady Milbanke's own hands : — "The
rods turned slowly and regularly in the manner above described, till the
twigs twisted themselves off below the lingers, which were considerably
indented by so forcibly holding the rod between them " (p. 42).

VII.— "The following is from Mr. F. Bastable, 14, Foskett-road,
Fulham : — . . . ' We procured two pairs of smith's tongs to see if the
twigs did actually twist, and held them in a tight grip, with one pair securing
the tips, and the other the fork, but the contortions still went on between
the points held ' " (pp. 86-87).

VIII. — The following is quoted from a letter written by Mr. J. Budd, of
Tivoli, Tramore, Waterford. He is described as an amateur geologist : —
"He [Mullins] held the twigs near their ends between his second and third
lingers, as if you were going to write, the point of the fork pointing
downwards. At No. 1., [referring to a plan] the point lifted itself up until
it turned over backward and twisted itself until it broke ! . . He

used another and another twig. The clerks then held them with him, and
held his hands, always the same effect. I saw to-day two of the broken
twisted twigs " (p. 110).

IX. — Mr. W. Stone, of Bolingbroke Hall, Spilsby, Lincolnshire, a
professional "dowser," writes in reference to a spring of water which he
•discovered for the Rev. Mr. Morgan in the Isle of Wight : — " The moment
I put my foot over the water, the rod turned in spite of me, broke itself, and
left the two ends between my fingers and thumb " (p. 133).

Before saying anything further on these nine cases, it may be useful to
refer to another class of phenomena. One of the most frequent and familiar
exemplifications of unconscious or involuntary muscular action is in "table-
tipping" or "table-moving" as ordinarily practised, when the hands of the
.sitters rest on the surface of the table. The majority of the results thus
obtained are probably due to unconscious muscular action, and to nothing
else. But it sometimes happens that similar movements of the table occur
when the table is entirely untouched by the sitters. For instance, the
historic case in the Report of the Committee of the Dialectical Society, the
evidence as to which has never been impugned. The conclusion of that
Committee is thus expressed : — "Your Committee express their unanimous
opinion that the one important physical fact thus proved to exist, that
motion may be produced in solid material bodies without material contact by
some hitherto unrecognised force operating within an undefined distance
from the human organism, and beyond the range of muscular action, should
be subjected to further scientific examination with a view to ascertain
its true nature, source and power." (Report of the Committee of the
Dialectical Society, original edition, p. 13.)

I do not overlook the interesting remarks which Professor Barrett makes,
following the two sentences above quoted from pp. 243 and 254. But they
do not seem to me to meet the case. Professor Barrett speaks of "the
extraordinary and involuntary spasm of muscular power, which often occurs

154 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1897.

in cases of hysteria, or in moments of great excitement, and which cannot
be repeated at will in the ordinary state" (p. 244). This is scarcely a
parallel case. In such instances the phenomenon is, so to speak, a mere
multiplication of ordinary or normal action. A man who ordinarily exerts
muscular force sufficient, say, to lift one cwt., suddenly exercises sufficient
force to lift, say, three or four cwt. The precise question is this : — Have we
any grounds which justify us in attributing to unconscious muscular action,
physical effects which it is beyond the power of conscious muscular action to
produce ? In the nine cases quoted above, could conscious or voluntary
muscular action produce the results obtained ? Will any amount of
voluntary muscular exertion produce the least effect in twisting or breaking
a twig beyond the point at which it is held, any more than it will move a
table at the distance even of a foot ? Professor Barrett recognises the diffi-
culty by saying: — "Certainly no voluntary effort, without long and laborious
practice at legerdemain, could produce an effect corresponding in kind or
degree to that which virtually takes place in the cases cited'' (p. 244). It
would be very interesting if, in cases where violent movements of the twig
occur with contact of the hands, some series of experiments were made to
ascertain whether any movement of the twig could be obtained without such
contact. If any movement was thus obtained the parallel between the rod
and the table would be complete. The nearest approach to this is in case
VII. quoted above, where the tips of the twig were tightly gripped by one
pair of smith's tongs, and the fork of the twig by another pair, — " but the
contortions still went on between the points held."

In the very first report of the Committee on Thought-reading, of which
Professor Barrett was one of the joint authors, there is a very interesting
reference to conscious and unconscious muscular action. (See Proceedinys
S.P.R., Vol. I., p. 15.) In a paper read before a scientific body in Detroit,
Dr. T. A. McGraw describes the method followed in certain thought-reading
experiments. After expressing his belief that most of the actions " could
be explained by the perception, by a trained operator, of involuntary and
unconscious mucular movements," he goes on to say that he does not believe
that explanation covers all the phenomena he witnessed. He adds : — "For
we are required [on that hypothesis] to believe a man could unwillingly, and
in spite of himself, give information by unconscious and involuntary signs
that he could not give under the same circumstances by voluntary and
conscious action." This puts the exact point most clearly. In asking us to
accept the unconscious muscular action hypothesis as an explanation of the
group of nine cases quoted above, Professor Barrett requires us to believe
that a man can unwillingly, and in spite of himself, move a rod or a twig,
sufficient force being manifested to violently twist and break it, under
circumstances in which he would be unable to effect any movement by
voluntary and conscious action.

These nine cases appear to warrant the conclusion that, as in the case of
table-moving, some cause other than muscular action must be looked for
before the whole ground is covered. The spiritualist may call the "dowser "
a " in " m. " But that does not carry us any further. It is rather singular

i *»7. ] Coivespondence. 155

tli.it, whereas several phases of what the spiritualist calls " mediumship" and
of what the S.P.R. calls "automatism" are frequently manifested by the
same person, the power of using the "divining rod" in, so far as I have
heard, not so associated. Many persons automatically write, draw and
paint ; but I have not heard of any "dowser" also gifted in this way ; nor
have I heard of any " medium ", in the spiritualist sense, being also a
"dowser." So far as this goes, it would not seem to encourage the idea
that "dowsing" belongs to the same class of phenomena as the forms of
automatism above-named. Professor Barrett says: — "The rod must be
regarded simply as the indicator of some action taking place upon or within
the living mechanism of the individual who holds the rod ; " and in order to
make it quite clear what he means by this, he adds : — " just as ' planchette '
or a tilting table is used to indicate muscular impressions made by or through
the so-called ' medium ', the movement of the rod being due to

involuntary reflex action" (p. 8).

The group of cases quoted above presents a strong primd facie case in
support of the view that some of the movements of the " divining rod " may
be attributable to a cause of quite another kind than muscular action. It
is also important to bear another consideration in mind. Seeing that
movements of tables and of other material objects do occur, — such as those
without contact, — for which a cause wholly different to muscular action
must be sought, it is probable that some of the results when contact exists
are due to the cause which produces the results when there is no contact.
Similarly as regards the " divining rod." If we are compelled to infer a
cause wholly different to muscular action for some of the results, it is
probable that muscular action is not the true cause in some of the cases
where, if they stood alone, it would present an adequate solution.

The assumption made by Professor Barrett that the movements of the
rod are always due to unconscious muscular action is therefore not only open
to question, but is one that the evidence he himself has brought forward
does not appear to justify. It is true that Professor Barrett says he leaves
this and other problems to the trained physiologist to solve ; is it well then
to adopt a positive view before such a solution has been offered ?

EDWARD T. BENNETT.

The question raised by Mr. Bennett is one well worthy of discussion,
but I doubt whether it can be profitably discussed without more knowledge
— based on the opinion of experts — than we at present possess.* I quite
agree with Mr. Bennett that at first sight it seems incredible that in-
voluntary muscular action could accomplish feats which are beyond the reach
of consciously directed voluntary action, and the passage quoted by him
from our first report on thought-reading shows that I myself was at one
time as strongly of that opinion as Mr. Bennett himself. But we have
learnt a good deal in the fifteen years that have passed since that report

* I do not know why Mr. Bennett selects only nine cases of the breaking of the
rod ; several others are quoted in my paper, as will be seen from the list given on p. 244.

156 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1897.

was written. One of the earliest lessons taught by our experimental
researches in so-called thought-reading was the fallacy of this preconceived
opinion. None of us now doubt that involuntary muscular guidance on
the part of the agent, and unconscious muscle-reading on the part of
the percipient, are, for the purpose in view, inimitable by, and more effective
than, any voluntary conscious act on the part of one or the other. Moreover,
we have been led to recognise more clearly the wide realm and im-
portance of the sub-conscious life. One of the most interesting facts
revealed in the investigation of the dowser's art is that it affords (as stated
on p. 255 of my paper) a striking instance of information obtained through
automatic means often transcending that derived from conscious observation
and inference.

As regards the motion of the divining rod, the widespread belief of a
sceptical public is, of course, that the dowser intentionally twists the forked
twig when he fancies he has reached the object of his quest. The evidence
I have adduced shows this belief is untenable. The only other alternative
known to science is that the motion of the twig must be due to some
involuntary muscular action on the dowser's part. It is true Melancthon
and the rest of the learned world of the sixteenth century thought that the
motion originated in the twig itself, and was a necessary consequence of the
"law of sympathy,"* but the learned Jesuit Father Kircher (one of the
founders of experimental science) about the year 1650 showed that the twig
itself was inert, and that in some way the motion was communicated from
the dowser himself. It is true Malebranche and Lebrun, 50 years after this,
urged with resistless logic that the explanation of the divining rod was to be
found in the sport of good-natured or mischievous devils, "the badinage of
demons " ; whether these philosophers thought the demons got hold of the
end of the stick and twisted it, or gave supernormal strength and skill to
the dowser, I do not know. t This spirit theory, apparently, is the view of
some people at the present day. It may be true enough, if these creatures
swarm in the neighbourhood of mediums and dowsers, only it needs a good
deal of evidence, and I am afraid it will be some time before science will
accept any evidence of that kind. Hence, as I have said, the only alter-
native before us is that some involuntary muscular action on the dowser's
part causes the twig to turn and sometimes break.

There is undoubtedly considerable difficulty in understanding how this
explanation covers all the facts, if such cases as Mr. Bennett has quoted are
correctly described. The breaking of the forked twig can only be accom-
plished by a rigid grasp of one of the forks, and a rotation of the twig by the
hand holding the other fork. This is probably what occurs — the skill and

* Every age has its fashionable fetish, this "law" was a notable idol of the
learned world in the 16th and 17th centuries.

t1 Malebranche refers Lebrun to both St. Augustine and Porphyry in support of
his view that the devils cannot be always at work tempting mankind, but must have
moments of relaxation like human beings ! Hence come their little jokes in table
rapping, Porphyry thinks.

DEC., is-.*:, i Correspondence. 157

strength required to do this, without much visible motion of the hand, being
as much beyond the conscious effort of the dowser as the feats of a
somnambulist or hypnotised person are beyond the power of the same
person in his normal state ; and the physiological explanation is probably
much the same in the two cases, namely, an automatic concentration and
discharge of most of the available nervous energy of the individual into one
narrow channel. I had intended, — as will be seen from the foot-note to
page 138 in my paper — discussing this question of unconscious muscular
action in its relation to the motion of the divining rod in the part of our
Proceedings which has recently been published. The paper had, however,
grown to such portentous length that I held over this question, and hope to
return to it in the second part of my paper.

Meanwhile, as I have received communications much to the same
purport as Mr. Bennett's letter from several well known scientific men,
who happen to be interested in this subject, I will here quote an extract
from the report of a small committee who, in 1894, critically examined a
dowser at work. The committee of investigation consisted of the pathologist
and the assistant physician of one of the British hospitals, Mr. Mole,
F.R.C.S., and Dr. F. H. Edgeworth, — the latter having made neurology
a special study — and the Rev. R. A. Chudleigh, of West Parley Rectory,
Wimborne, Dorset. Mr. Chudleigh, who acted as reporter, though not an
M.D., has made a life-long study of both physiology and pathology. The
committee were therefore well qualified. They were fortunate in securing
the co-operation of a skilful amateur dowser, who placed himself as well as
his estate (on the border of the Mendips) entirely at their service. In the
course of a lengthy report, Mr. Chudleigh says : " If there be one thing
which is perfectly clear it is that the movement of the wand is due to an
unconscious muscular contraction, just like other muscular contractions,
except that it is unconscious." Albeit, he goes on to say, "The violent
tremor which convulsed the overstrained arm is itself enough to suggest
witchcraft to an ordinary spectator, and yet I am sure that it is nothing
more than what is known as muscle-clonus." Anatomical reasons are then
given to account for the sudden violent motion of the rod, and the report
continues : " A precisely analogous phenomenon is seen in those cases where
a spinal wound or a spinal poison throws the whole body into universal
spasm ; but the flexors master the extensors and the back muscles over-
power the front ones, the result being the frightful and well known pose
called opisthotonw." The writer then points out that the sudden spontaneous
tension of the muscles of the arms which occur when the dowser believes
himself to be over a spring is probably due to auto-suggestion ; " this
auto-suggestion makes a diviner positively tetanic when he knows or thinks
that water is present."* The symptoms described in the foregoing were
more strikingly exhibited by the late Mr. W. Scott Lawrence than by most
other dowsers ; the dowser, whom this small committee investigated, was a
journalist who does not wish his name published. Notwithstanding this

* See Farm and Home, May 18<J4, p. 132.

158 Journal of Society for Psychical Research- [DEC., 1897.

report there is, however, I admit (and as I have stated in my paper) room
for further physiological examination, especially as regards the points named
on pages 243-246 of my paper. I am glad to say that one of the foremost
anatomists of the day has kindly promised me to make such an examination
if an opportunity can be given him of seeing a dowser at work. This, I
hope, may be possible before the second part of my paper appears.

W. F. BARRETT.

"FACES IN THE DARK."
Tour de Peilz, Vaud, Switzerland, November 4t/i, 1897.

To DR. R. HODGSON, London.

SIR, — Some time last year I wrote to Mr. Myers about inward vision.
As I have since gone on studying that interesting subject, the time has
perhaps come that something about it should be printed in the Journal, in
order to elicit other communications of the same kind.

This is what I have observed, that when I am in bed, at night, before
going to sleep, I constantly see, my eyes being closed, figures of things and
faces, more or less distinctly, as if lighted slightly, on the dark inner surface
(as it seems) of my eyelids, — and more probably on my retina.

That inward vision is independent of my will, can neither be conjured up
nor be cancelled at will.

It does not happen during the day, unless in a dark room and after my
eyes have been closed for at least a quarter of an hour.

When in bed at night, it is not immediately that it takes place, but
usually after a few minutes of rest.

If I am in good health, the temperature of my blood being normal, the
objects of that vision do not force themselves on my attention, but the
moment I think of the subject I begin to see them floating in the dark.

If on the other hand, having, say, caught a cold, I am feverish, I cannot
but see the kaleidoscopic views ; they intrude on my attention, being more
lighted, more vivid and consequently more distinct.

As to the nature of the things seen, they are sometimes geometrical
lines, oftener bits of landscape, or furniture of a house, a piano, an arm-
chair, etc., and oftenest faces of living beings, animals or more generally
human faces.

Sometimes I can distinguish the whole body of the man or woman, but
generally I see distinctly only the face, which may be old or young,
handsome or ugly, or plain, the remainder of the figure being in a half
light, as in one of Rembrandt's pictures. The vision of one object lasts never
more than a few seconds, from five to twenty, and is insensibly replaced by
another. And this goes on as long as I am conscious of my own self, before
going to sleep, sometimes a quarter of an hour, sometimes less.

And that is not all. The faces I see in that way being always faces of
people unknown to me, I often try to see if I am acquainted with the parties,
and it sometimes happens that I make a guess. "Is not this Mr. X.'?"
for instance ; but immediately I see iii, my mind the face of Mr. X., as I

Due., 189?.] Correspondence. 159

know it to be, and I am enabled, by comparing the two images, to see the
difference between them.

I can visualize easily and conjure up before my mind the face known to
me ; but my inward vision is something quite different. Hundreds of times
have I willed to see a face known to me while looking at an unknown face in
the dark camera of my closed eye ; and I have always succeeded in seeing
both at the same time, one in my eye, the conjured up one in my head, at
the cerebral seat (I suppose) of the visual power.

What am I to conclude from these observations ?

I think I am justified in saying that my retina is the seat of moleculary
motions at all times, motions producing images, which I can see only when
the impressions from outside have died out, something like the dreams of the
retina, and secondly that when with my eyes closed I conjure up the image
of a thing or being, that image being located somewhere in my memory-
centres, my mind wakens up that image, and I perceive it in my brain.

I suppose also that the power of seeing images in a crystal is nothing
else than the power of projecting into the crystal the images spontaneously
created by the retina (a power, by the bye, which I do not possess).

I would also ask if, when one sees in a dream visions of things or of
people, it does not originate in that continual moleculary motion of the
retina cells, perceived and interpreted by a half awake brain.

Do you not think, Sir, that there is here a field for interesting
investigations and studies ? — I am yours truly, . CLARDON

[The experiences described by Mr. Glardon belong apparently to the type
known as In/pnagogic illusions. See Gurney's account of these in Phantasms
of the Living, Vol. I., pp. 390, 473 ; also Principles of Psychology, by
Professor James, Vol. II., p. 124 ; and other works cited by these authors.
It would be interesting to know how far those of our members who have
similar experiences are also successful in "crystal-gazing." The question
as to how far the apparent spatial location of the visual images — (1) caused
by changes in the retinal field, (2) reproduced for examination by a definite
act of recollection, (3) spontaneously arising in ordinary memory, — varies
for different persons is also an interesting one. We invite careful observations
from our members. — ED.]

CRITICISM OF VARIOUS CASES REPORTED IN THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY
FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

It seems to me desirable that, along with the cases which appear in the
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, some comments should be
published expressing the views of the members or associates individually
upon the degree of value of the evidence and upon the degree of relation
between the different events recorded. The expression of different views
would thus provide a school of training in scientific methods of investigation.
The improvement in the power of differentiation, for instance, between a
coincidence and the relation of cause and effect of two events would be of

1 60 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1897.

great assistance in forming a more accurate conception of the value of
different cases. There are so many incidents which occur in this world that
many of them must necessarily coincide. No one would think, for instance,
that if a Chinese princess in Pekiii were to report that she saw a wedding
in her dream and a wedding should occur at St. George's Church at the
same moment she dreamt it (as it might then be day-time in London), there
should be any relation between the two events or that the Chinese princess
was in any way endowed with clairvoyant powers, and, unless a closer
relationship can be established between two events than may possibly occur
between the thoughts and dreams of a Chinese princess and the events
which occur at St. George's Church, it strikes me that we arc not justified in
considering such events except in the light of coincidence, more particularly
so if we can trace reasonable causes not related to each other to account for
the respective events. So our endeavours should be directed to account for
unusual occurrences by natural causes before attributing them to abnormal
causes. Take for instance case L. 1096. An Ps, The Two Weddinys,
reported in the November number of Journal. There is no definite object
or purpose carried out by the information conveyed to Miss Luke in her
dream, there is apparently no relation between her and the married parties,
i.e., no apparent anxiety on the part of the married parties to convey to her
the information, none on her part to receive it, as there is no statement in
the report that she knew anything of the parties. The dream occurred more
than 24 hours after the event, showing it could not be an actual percep-
tion ; and, if the dream had occurred a year instead of a day after, no
importance would have been attached to it by anybody. The corroboration
afforded by the reception given after the wedding is very slight indeed, as it
occurred to the mind of the dreamer as a communion service, which is very
different from the actual reception that took place, and, moreover, she
cannot tell in respect of which wedding the communion service took place.
Again, the meaning of the dream, had it been a telepathic communication,
was not conveyed to the dreamer, as she took it for a sign of death in the
family, so that her early return home was prompted by a mistaken notion
and was of no avail to effect any purpose. Apparently the only details that
coincide would be that two weddings took place, both in St. John's Church,
accompanied with music and flowers. Now, taking the facts by themselves,
that there were two weddings on the eve of Thanksgiving Day in St. John's
Church with music and flowers is nothing extraordinary, — in fact, something
very natural. On the other hand, we are told that Miss Luke from child-
hood had been an inveterate somnambulist, walking almost every night, of
which she had, however, been cured. This informs us, at least, that she
dreams almost every night. She also informs us that it is a pleasure to her
to attend church weddings for the sake of music and pleasant surroundings,
and the report implies that she is a familiar visitor of St. John's Church.
Is there anything extraordinary in her dreaming of weddings, music and
flowers occurring at that church ? To my idea, there is no more relation
between the two events than between the dream of the Chinese princess
referred to and a wedding taking place in St. George's Church, London.

DEC., 1897.] Case. nil

I'-ut, one may say, how can we account for the actual occurrence of two
weddings, admitting this to be usual, together with dreaming that two
weddings took place, which cannot be considered very usual ? I should say
that this is the only real correspondence that exists between the two, and
which struck the relatives of Miss Luke most. Had she dreamt of only one
wedding, the remainder of the dream would not have been considered in
any way extraordinary, but, considering the frequency of her dreaming, this
may easily be accounted a coincidence. If two blind men were in the habit
of throwing stones in the street, the one who would throw the greater
number would be more likely to hit some one than the other, but he could
not be accounted a good marksman for that reason, nor should his hitting
any one be considered an extraordinary occurrence.

P. Z. HEBERT, M.D., A.S.P.R.

CASE.

P. 168. [A.B. 170.]

By request of the direct witnesses in this case, other initials have
been substituted for their real names.

The Winder-mere, 400 W. 57th Street, N.Y.C.

DR. RICHARD HODGSON, — MY DEAR SIR, — At last I have the prophetic
dream by Mrs. J., upon whose statements entire reliability may be placed.
I enclose her address, etc., so that you may by writing to her undoubtedly
obtain further details, and also the first hand testimony of Mrs. G.

HENRY S. GOODALE.
[Associate A.B.S.P.R.].

Mr. Goodale enclosed the following account : —

[February, 1896].
MY DREAM.

It was a night in August, 1879, in Catskill, N.Y., that I dreamed, at the
ringing of the factory bell of a winter's morning at 6.30 o'clock the door
bell was rung. Mr. C. E. G. (in whose home Mr. J. and I were then living)
was in New York, and Mr. J. answered the bell. He returned to the room
with the word that my mother-in-law Mrs. S. J. (a widow), who was living
alone with her servant, was lying in a fit at her home. We were both
hurriedly dressing, when at the tolling of the factory bell five minutes later,
the door bell was again rung, and word was brought that she was dead.
Mr. J. hastened to the house, I following as quickly as possible. In my
dream it was a dark winter's morning, the air was full of sleet and cold, and
as I passed through the streets, lights were twinkling in the houses, and
breakfast fires were being started. The house stood upon a corner, and as I
approached it, it was a blaze of light. The two doctors who had been called
were there, and two or three near neighbours. When I entered the house, I
was requested by Mr. J. not to look upon the face of the dead. She was

162 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1897.

lying in an upper room and in a few minutes I found it necessary to go to
her. I was terror-stricken at her appearance. Her face was black as any
negro, and she had the appearance of sudden death.

Upon waking from this dream I told it, and later in the morning, as it
was still vividly before me, I related it to Mrs. G. The dream faded, and I
thought no more of it, until the morning of its fulfilment, December 31st,
1879, when I saw it completely developed, and the whole scene took place
in reality, as I have related it, even to the twice ringing of the door bell,
first at the ringing of the factory bell, and five minutes later, at its tolling.
The face of the dead even was as startling in reality as in my dream. Upon
entering the house, I was requested not to go to her as in my dream, but, in
the absence of Mr. J. , the arrival of the Coroner demanded my entering the
room a little later. The appearance of the streets and of the brightly
lighted house itself was as I dreamed it.

[MRS. J.].

In reply to enquiries, Mrs. J. writes : —

Catskill, N.Y., March 5th, 1896.

MR. RICHARD HODGSON, — MY DEAR SIR, — . . . In reply to your
question, "Was it to Mr. J. you told your dream upon waking?" and
" Will he send some statement upon the matter?" It was to him I first
told my dream, but since then, he has passed out of my life. Mrs. G.,
however, is willing to state the fact of my having told her the dream the
morning after its occurrence, and remembers having come into my room
immediately upon Mr. J.'s hasty departure, the morning of its fulfilment,
and asking me if I remembered my dream.

I would like to say to you that I wrote off very hastily this account of
the dream, and sent to Mr. Goodale, who has often asked me for it. ...
I gave the facts. Indeed, perhaps I ought to have added that the face was
really black as in my dream, by reason of inhaling the hot air from the
register, upon which she had fallen while preparing for the night's rest. It
was in this condition she was found by her maid at the hour I have named
in the morning, having lain, face downward, upon this register all the night.
She was known by her physician to have a disease of the heart.

[MRS. J.J

The following statement was sent to me by Mrs. J. : —

March 6th, 1896.

MR. RICHARD HODGSON, — MY DEAR SIR, — I remember Mrs. J. having
told me this dream the morning after its occurrence. I had forgotten it,
until the morning of its fulfilment, when the twice ringing of the doorbell,
first, at the ringing, and again at the tolling of the factory bell, brought the
dream to my remembrance. I also remember having gone into her room
after Mr. J.'s hasty departure, while she was still dressing, and having
asked her if she remembered her dream. Seventeen years having elapsed
since that time, what Mrs. J. told me of her dream has very much faded,
but I was very much impressed with the strangeness of it all at the time of
Mrs. J.'s death, and of the remarkable coincidence.

DKC., mi?.] Review. 163

I followed Mrs. J. to the home of her mother-in-law an hour or two
later, and found the face of the one in death, as the dream had prophesied—
black and terrible to look upon. fMns G 1

Mrs. J. writes further : —

Catskill, N.Y., March llth.

DR. RICHARD HODGSON, — MY DEAR SIR, — . . . The statement given
by Mrs. G. was dictated to me by her, read by her, and then signed by her.
I gladly enclose two statements — which you may like to have— given by
friends to whom I told my dream after its fulfilment.

I have never had any other experience of a similar nature. . .

[MRS. J.]

The enclosures were written by two ladies who testify to their
having heard Mrs. J. relate her dream shortly after its fulfilment.

REVIEW.

Ghiesses at the Middle of Existence. By GOLD WIN SMITH, D.C.L., etc. —

Macmillaii, 1897.

In this small volume Dr. Goldwin Smith has collected five essays which
fully maintain, — which, perhaps, should even enhance, — their author's
reputation as a concise and polished writer. It contains some excellent
specimens of the trenchancy of his controversial style. One would be
sorry after reading this book to have to maintain any longer certain
doctrines which it incidentally controverts ; say for instance the doctrine of
the hypostatic union of the Pope and the Holy Ghost. Nay, even some
philosophers who regard themselves as serenely grounded in reason might
find this work a bitter pill. One could not have recommended it, for
instance, as agreeable reading either to the late Professor Drummond or to
the living Mr. Kidd. My own concern, however, is not so much to shield
my special creeds from any attack, as to point out — with mingled feelings —
that those creeds have not as yet risen high enough above the ground to
come within the sweep of the author's exterminating sword. An essay
entitled " Is there Another Life?" after an allusion to Cock Lane, (Boswell's,
not Mr. Lang's), proceeds as follows : —

" It cannot be necessary to discuss such fictions. The only case, so far
as we are aware, in which there is anything like first-hand evidence, is that
of the warning apparition to Lord Lyttelton, which may be explained as the
masked suicide of a voluptuary sated with life. Nor can spiritualistic
apparitions call for notice here. They have been enough exposed."

In an essay on "Morality and Theism," also, the following passage
occurs : —

" Of Spiritualism little need be said. ... It can hardly be admitted
even to have a good title to its name, since the dead are made to ' materialise,'
and to use material instruments of communication."

164 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC, 1897.

Now, in the first place I would remark that this last argument, which I have
often seen before, seems to depend wholly on a mere confusion of thought.
Assuming for argument's sake that "materialisations" may be genuine
phenomena, — that " spirit hands" may write on slates and the like ; — what
is there here to interfere with the doctrine that a world of spirits exists 1
No one either pretends or desires to prove that the world of spirit is without
action on the world of matter. If spirits exist, and can communicate with
us, they must use or affect certain material objects — namely, our own brains
and organisms — and if they can make temporary organisms of their own to
help them, so much the better. It will only be a still more striking
illustration of the stoic's faith : "A little soul for a little upholds this
corpse, which is man."

But of course it is the dictum as to Lord Lyttelton's apparition with
which I am directly concerned. Observe that we are not here dealing with
a hostile criticism on the work of the S.P.R., but with a plain expression
of absolute — I say absolute, I do not say inexcusable — ignorance thereof.
No controversialist, — least of all so straight a hitter as Dr. Goldwin
Smith, — would have selected the old Lord Lyttelton as the champion to be
demolished, if he had been aware that a group of human beings exists who
care but little for that bold bad man, but who claim to have published, say,
a thousand cases which at any rate rise above an evidential level below
which Lord Lyttelton distinctly falls.

There is of course, at first sight, something depressing in the light thus
incidentally thrown upon the position which psychical studies occupy in
many minds which one cannot disregard. While Spiritualism is vaguely
heard of and uninquiringly despised, our own work is as yet, not ignored
only, but absolutely unknown. Y"et I confess that in myself this striking
illustration of the obscurity in which our labours still lie produces an
impression far more of hope than of disappointment. That thought is to me
what the thought of continents of fossils yet undisturbed is to the
palaeontologist in search of proofs of evolution. "From how small a
fragment of earth's backward-stretching history," he exclaims, " have these
numerous and striking, if as yet incomplete, illustrations of our theory been
drawn ! What evidence may there not lie hidden in all these mighty
regions still unexplored ! " Yes ; and from how small a fragment of forward-
looking history, (I am disposed to echo) — from how narrow a field, how
scanty a harvesting of those wide-scattered indications which point to man's
evolution now in progress, and destined through many an age to run, have
we on our part collected already all our volumes of evidence ! Evidence it
is, which, however you may rate it, at least a thousand times outweighs —
but what compliment can we pay ourselves without fear of being thought
extravagant ? — well, at any rate, a thousand times outweighs any hopes of
immortality which mankind at large may have based upon the story of the
bad Lord Lyttelton.

The moral of all this is plain enough. Our thanks to those of our
members who discern it and act upon it ! May they multiply exceedingly
and live long in the land ! F W H M

No. CXLV.— VOL. VIII. JANUARY, ls<«.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS.

New Member and Associates 165

Meeting of the Council 105

Oeneral Meeting 166

Correspondence : —

" b':u-us in the Dark'' 170

Criticism of Cases Reported in the Journal .. .. . .. .. .. .. 171

Supplementary Library Catalogue 17i>

NEW MEMBER AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Honorary Associates are prefixed by an Asterisk.

CORRESPONDING MEMBER.
DR. H. DE VARIGNY, 7, Rue de Sfax, Paris.

NEW ASSOCIATES.

A DAMSON, REV. HENRY, Heathcote, Christchurch, New Zealand.
r>;-RY, MRS. HEXRY, Mayfield House, Farnham, Surrey.
MARSH, EDWARD H., B.A., 30, Bruton-st, Berkeley-sq., London, W,
MASTERMAN, CHARLES F. G., B.A., Christ's College, Cambridge.
. ORR, MRS. SUTHERLAND, 11, Kensington-park-gardens, London, W.
WILKINS, SILVANUS, 15, Victoria-street, Westminster, S.W.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.
O'HARA, DR. R. G., Bedford City, Va.
POWERS, MRS. ELLEN F., Townsend, Mass.

*SUTTON, MRS. KATHARINE P., The Highlands, Athol Centre, Mass.
TVUCK, .Mi;s. MOSKS Corr, 5, East-avenue, Ithaca, N.Y.
WATERMAN, L. E , 265, Macon-street, Brooklyn, N.Y.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held on December 10th at the
Westminster Town Hall, Professor H. Sidgwick in the chair. There
were also present : — Col. J . Hartley, Dr. R. Hodgson, Dr. G. F. Rogers,

166 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1898.

Dr. A. Wallace, and Messrs. St. George Lane Fox, F. W. H. Myers,
F. Podmore, and R. Pearsall Smith.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and signed as correct.

On the proposal by letter of Professor Barrett, seconded by Mr.
F. W. H. Myers, Dr. H. de Yarigny, of Paris, was elected a
Corresponding Member of the Society for the ensuing year.

On the proposal of Dr. R. Hodgson, seconded by Mr. F. W. H.
Myers, Mrs. K. P. Sutton was elected an Honorary Associate for the
ensuing year.

Six new Associates were elected, and the election of four new
Associates of the American Branch was recorded. Names and
addresses are given above.

The Council recorded with regret the decease of Mr. John
Whitehead, of Guernsey, who had been an Associate of the Society for
some years.

The resignation of one Member and ten Associates who, from
various causes, desired to withdraw from the Society at the end of the
year, was accepted. It was agreed to strike off the list the names of
four Members and thirteen Associates who had either removed or been
lost sight of, or who had become only nominal Members.

The names of the Members of the Council who retire by rotation
at the end of the year were read over. The Assistant Secretary was
desired to send out all necessary notices for the Annual Meeting of the
Members of the Society to be held at the Westminster Town Hall on
the 28th of January next, at 3 p.m.

Various other matters of business having been attended to the
Council agreed that its next meeting should be at the Westminster
Town Hall, at the close of the Annual Meeting of Members on
January 28th, 1898.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 89th General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, December 10th, at 4 p.m. : PROFESSOR
H. SIDGWICK in the chair.

DR. RICHARD HODGSON gave an address on the " Latest Investiga-
tions of Trance Phenomena manifested through Mrs. Piper," the
paper being a continuation of that read at the previous meeting
of November 5th. A very brief account is here appended, as Dr.
Hodgson's Report will be published in the next Part of the
Proceedings. Giving further illustrations of the alleged "communi-
cations " from "deceased" persons, he described the change which the

•I\N. IMS.] General Meeting. 167

trance had undergone during the past year. The effort to obtain
proof of identity from what purported to be the late Rev. W. Stainton
Moses resulted in various "communications " ffom a group of persons
who claimed to be those known to the living Mr. Moses as Imperator,
Doctor, Rector, &c. ; and, finally, in the latter part of January, 1897,
Imperator assumed the supervisory control of Mrs. Piper's trance,
since which time the Phinuit personality had not manifested. Co-
incident with this change, the convulsive movements which used
to characterise Mrs. Piper's going into and coming out of trance com-
pletely disappeared, and there seemed to be a marked improvement in
every way. Considering whether the whole series of manifestations in
question could be accounted for without going beyond the action
of living persons, the lecturer pointed out that we must take into
account that several other " communicators " (besides Phinuit) who
used the voice, showed strongly marked characteristics, intellectual
and emotional, in addition to the reproduction of specific memories, of
the persons they claimed to be ; that this was the case also with some
of the communicators who used the hand to write messages ; that these
various intelligences, when thus communicating directly, as it were, and
not through Phinuit, showed sincerity and earnestness, and claimed to
be the discarnate friends or relatives of the sitters ; and that the
conceptions of such discarnate persons so manifested seemed best
explainable on the hypothesis that the communications did actually
emanate from such persons rather than from the minds of incarnate
persons, and especially as, on the latter hypothesis, it must be supposed
that information was telepathically drawn from distant living persons
who had never been at sittings with Mrs. Piper. Referring to
the obscurities and mistakes and failures of many sittings, the lecturer
urged that these seemed to show some systematic order when con-
nected with the supposed still existing personalities of the dead, but
were not so explicable when viewed in relation to living persons only.
He said that it might require a very rare faculty in a "spirit" to
communicate clearly, and that it was not unreasonable to suppose that
if human beings survived death, their discarnate personalities, owing
to various causes, — such as the wrench of death itself, or their change
to an existence spent under, perhaps, very different and new condi-
tions,— might find much difficulty at first in communicating clearly ; it
might be like awakening from a deep sleep. Further confusion might
arise from the fact that they were, ex hypothesi, using not their own
original fleshly bodies to communicate, but the body of a stranger;
we might expect such disturbances as aphasia and agraphia ; there
would be difficulty as regards inhibition ; the conditions would be

168 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1898.

very burdensome, but successive trials would show an improvement.
Such considerations throw much light on the obscurities in Mrs.
Piper's trance. The "analogy used by Socrates at the beginning of
the seventh book of Plato's republic suggested the bewilderment of
the " returning soul," — which, after leaving the dark cave with its
shadows, and becoming, after a period of bewilderment in the world
of light above, familiar with its new conditions, is again bewildered
in the opposite way on return to the den of darkness. The lecturer
also quoted cases which seemed to indicate that young children were
particularly clear in "communicating." As to the statements made
in the trance concerning the conditions of the alleged " other life,"
these conditions seemed to be so different from ours that only analogies
could be used, and in any case the matter seemed for the most part
irrelevant to our present evidential inquiry. But some of the state-
ments might be worth considering, such as that they have etherial
bodies, and this might be capable, eventually, of proof or disproof by
living persons. He said, in conclusion, that although a wide margin
must be allowed for the building up of fictitious personalities in
connection with trance states, and although it might be a long time
before it could be established as exclusively true, yet he had no
practical doubt whatever that these communications come mainly from
the " returning dead " ; and the significance of the case, he thought,
would be much heightened when taken in connection with other lines
of our research, such as Mr. Myers had developed in his articles on
Phantasms of the Dead and the Subliminal Consciousness.

Mr. H. L. BEVAN put some questions with the view, apparently, of
eliciting what appeared to him to be weak points in the investigation
He drew attention to what he regarded as a suspicious circumstance,
— namely, that Mrs. Piper received payment for her seances, — and
reminded the lecturer that people frequently lied for money. He also
thought it a weak point that no professional detectives had been called
in as sitters, and that such alienists as had had sittings did not believe
that the phenomena came from " spirits." He was proceeding with
further questions along the lines of the precautions that should be
taken to prevent imposture.

DR. WALLACE objected that the time of the meeting ought not be
taken up by the consideration of matters which had been dealt with in
previously published reports, and which were familiar to the audience.

The CHAIRMAN eventually ruled that sufficient time had been given
to Mr. Bevan for questions of such elementary character.

MR. PAGE HOPPS stated that he was a minister of the Gospel, and
was paid for his work, that perhaps Mr. Bevan was a lawyer and was

.I\N., is!i8.] General Meeting. 161)

paid for his uork, and he remonstrated against the casting of aspersions
upon Mrs. Piper because of the fact that she received payment for the
use of her time and energy. He urged that the utmost care should be
taken to discover trustworthy mediums, who should be isolated from
unfriendly influences, and paid as we should pay a lawyer or pay a
minister.

.Mi:. LANE Fox stated that Dr. Hodgson was well-known as a
careful investigator, and that his skill and knowledge of devices used
in various forms of imposture had been shown in several recorded
cases into which he had made enquiry ; and he thought that as regards
this point the investigation might be considered thorough. But the
interpretation of the facts was another matter. He said that to speak
of souls coming back might lead to confusion of thought, and he
disagreed with any view that Dr. Hodgson might seem to have
expressed that the alleged communicating intelligences were in any
sense like wandering bodies. They were more probably analogous to
such as communicate with us in our dreams, and did not represent the
whole personality of the individual. There might be some direct
relation between them and us, but, if so, it was of some transcen-
dental kind.

MB. GAGEN put some questions, and urged that it was difficult to
suppose that if the soul was pure idea, it could come back to sense,
and communicate in the way suggested. The phenomena seemed
better explicable on the hypothesis that the medium was under some
hypnotic influence, and was in that state sensitive to the impressions
received from the persons present at the sittings.

MB. MYERS pointed out that such a hypothesis was not adequate to
account for many of the occurrences. He referred to the information
which Professor Lodge had obtained through Mrs. Piper's trance
concerning his Uncle Jerry, most of which was unknown to the sitters,
and could with difficulty be verified from other sources. As to
whether the soul could return or not, it was a question of evidence.
If it did return and communicate with us, such communication must
be in terms which we could comprehend, and we knew of no a priori
reason why it should not, if so returning, be able to use its earthly
memory, or affect some earthly body, perhaps in much the same way as
our own souls might be supposed to do now while we are still incarnate.

A few other questions were asked, and DR. WALLACE suggested
that an opportunity might be given for further discussion at an
adjourned meeting.

The CHAIRMAN remarked that it would be well to wait till the
Report of the Investigations appeared in the Proceedings before any

170 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1898.

arrangement was made for another meeting for further discussion, and
that after this Report was in the hands of the members, such an
arrangement would be made.
The meeting then adjourned.

CORRESPONDENCE.

[The Editor is not responsible for opinions expressed by Correspondents.}

"FACES IN THE DARK."

London, December 5t1i, 1897.

DEAR SIR, — The experiences of Mr. Glardon with the "Faces in the
Dark " interest me all the more for being a subject quite familiar to me,
although appearing to me under somewhat different circumstances.

I have that experience every time I close my eyes, be it at day or at
night, in the dark or in the light, except if the light was so close to the eyes
and so bright that only the glare and colors would be felt and seen. The
images are of very different kinds ; faces, landscapes, rooms, sometimes
geometrical figures — animals very often. Now, I must state that I am very
bad at visualizing and generally producing images at will. In two cases only
I saw faces known to me as pictures of far-away friends, and even this did
not happen at will. I have the faculty of crystal-gazing (some experiences
having been recorded in the Journal this year) [May, 1897] and I can see,
too, with my eyes shut, but, curiously enough, only things and persons
unknown to me or in surroundings of which I know nothing and which in
almost every case turn out to be correct. So that I am quite sure that these
faces and images are not the result of any impressions from outside,
conscious or unconscious, for the images seen with eyes shut as well as for
those in the crystal (I use simply water).

Faces and curious figures I can see too with my eyes open, sometimes on
a white or light surface (for instance, I saw one evening a very pretty head
of a girl with curly hair on the pale grey sleeve of my gown), sometimes in
twilight. But these last are too easily effects of illusion, so I do not pay any
attention to such visions. What is the most interesting to me in such
images, of the clearness and reality of which I can assure myself by closer
observation and which last a certain time — that is the rather comical fact
that sometimes these faces seem very much alive and make " faces " at me.
They often look very ugly then, and, when animal, more like the monsters
of fairy-tales, although not of the conventional type of dragons and such. If
the weakness of my sight had not prevented my further studying painting,
it would have been very useful perhaps of fixing a series of these strange
images for real investigation, accessible to everyone. Generally I can
dismiss these images, or change to a new series, with a slight effort of will.
But memory or recollection — in ordinary sense — have nothing to do with
my case. — Yours truly,

* N. DE GERNET, M.S.P.R.

JAN., 1898.] Correspondence. 171

December 6th, 1897.

SIR, — As you invite discussion on this subject, 1 will give an account of
H vision that I had in the autumn of 1894, although my experience was not
the same as the " inward vision " described by Mr. Glardon, my eyes being
"pen at the time.

I had gone to bed after a long journey, but was too tired to sleep, when
suddenly the portion of the room opposite my bed seemed to be flooded with
light. This light gradually assumed the form of a circle about two or three
yards in diameter, and then I saw distinctly a coloured landscape with a
cottage and some trees. I was wide awake at the time and very much
surprised and interested. I had often heard of hypnagogic illusions, and had
read of an instance in the Daily Graphic not long before, but I imagined
that they were only seen by persons who were habitually subject to
hallucination. I had heard that these visions were generally a reproduction
of something previously seen, but I could not remember having seen any
landscape exactly like this one, although it is quite possible that I might
have done so and forgotten it. When the vision gradually faded away, I
tried to produce another by an effort of will, and succeeded, but the result
\v;is very feeble compared to the first.

1 have never been able to see anything in a crystal, although I have often

tried to do so.

H. K. (Associate).

CRITICISM OF CASES.
(To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.)

SIR, — Will you allow me to make a few remarks on the questions raised
in Dr. Hebert's letter to the last number of the Journal ? It seems to me an
excellent proposal that members of the S.P.R. should seriously study and
sift the cases printed in the Journal, with a view to judging what value
should be attached to them, and not assume — in spite of all Editorial
cautions to the contrary — that every incident recorded is to be regarded as
evidence of something supernormal. As to the particular case referred to,
Miss Luke's dream of the two weddings, I think with Dr. Hebert that there
is very little evidence of anything beyond chance in the coincidence, though
I think that her other experiences, in which the evidence seems somewhat
better, should be allowed to weigh a little in estimating this one.

The view that coincidences of this kind are in general due to chance is
not, of course, a novel one. For instance, St. Augustine relates in his
"Confessions" that when as a young man he became interested in the study
of Astrology, a certain wise old man among his friends advised him to give it
up, since he himself had studied it in his youth and found it utterly false.
4iOf whom when I had demanded, how then could many true things be
foretold by it, he answered me 'that the force of chance, diffused through-
out the whole order of things, brought this about.' "

Dr. Hebert naturally does not put forward the explanation as a new one ;
but he does not seem quite to realise that almost all the work of the S.P.R.,
from its foundation in 1882 to the present day, has been directed t wards

172 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [.JAN., mis.

testing its adequacy in the case of the psychical phenomena dealt with.
He remarks that " improvement in the power of differentiation between a
coincidence and the relation of cause and effect of two events would be of
great assistance in forming a more accurate conception of the value of
different cases. There are so many incidents which occur in this world that
many of them must necessarily coincide." I have not a word to say in
contravention of this latter statement, and I agree fully that the power of
differentiation between a coincidence and the relation of cause and effect of
two events is highly desirable. But I do not quite understand how Dr.
Hebert proposes to cultivate it. What exactly — apart from metaphysics —
do we mean by the relation of cause and effect ? Do we mean anything
more than that two events have occurred so often together that mankind
have agreed to consider that they are causally connected ? The two events
may be of an absolutely diverse kind, such as, a man walking across the
street, and my consciousness of seeing him do it. The only ground I have
for assuming that rny perception is caused by his action is that the two
events have so often occurred together. Suppose, however, that I constantly
had this impression, and that there was sometimes a real man in the street
at the time, and sometimes not. How could we tell whether — on the
occasions when the man was there — there was, or was not, any connection
between his presence and my impression 1 A single coincidence would
certainly not be enough to prove it, nor would a single absence of coinci-
dence be enough to disprove it.

The main problem before the S. P. II. is, as Dr. Hebert implies, precisely
-of this nature. But he does not offer any criticism of the way in which it
has attempted to deal with it. The most careful study of individual cases,
though of course indispensable at a preliminary — or indeed at any — -stage ot
the enquiry, does not carry us very far. Xo one case can stand alone, on its
own merits ; it can hardly even fall alone. The most striking and well
authenticated coincidence might be— and if unique, probably would be —
merely due to chance ; while coincidences of a very unimpressive kind, if
sufficiently numerous in proportion to similar cases where there was no
coincidence, might afford very good evidence. The difficulty is that the
coincidences dealt with in psychical research are not so numerous that
" mankind have agreed to think them not fortuitous." We have indeed
published some thousands of cases of apparitions or dreams coinciding with
some external event unknown to the percipient ; but every one knows that
thousands of other cases occur ill which no such coincidence can be shown
and which we must regard as purely subjective.

The question then is not one which can be decided by an appeal to
common sense, or a study of individual cases. It is one where we are
obliged, in order to form a j udgment of what chance can or cannot effect, to
resort to the help of what St. Augustine, in the passage referred to above,
calls "those impostors whom they style Mathematicians." For, as Professor
Karl Pearson points out in his essay on " The Chances of Death," the
ancient conception " of chance as that which obeys no rule and defies all
measure and prediction," has now been replaced by one totally different.

.IAN., i8»8.] Correspondence.

" Where wo cannot predict, where wo do not find order and regularity, there
\\r should now assert that something else th.-ui chance is at work. What we
are to understand by a chance distribution is one in accordance with law and
<>iif the nature of which can for all practical purposes be closely predicted."
Again, he says, (in " The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo roulette") " what
the natural philosopher understands by chance is not his ignorance of how
any individual event, e.g., the spin of a teetotum, may result, but it is his
knowledge of the percentages and failures which are sure to occur in a con-
siderable number of trials. . . . A knowledge of the average results of many
events is used to replace ignorance of the result of any individual event."

Mr. Gurney some years ago devised an application of the theory of proba-
bilities to one clearly defined class of cases, —that of an apparition seen at
the time of death of the person whom it is recognised by the percipient as
representing. (See Phantasms of the Living, Vol. II., Chap. XIII.) It is
obvious that since both events— the seeing of an apparition and the death of
an acquaintance — are comparatively rare, an accidental coincidence between
them would be very rare indeed. It is equally true, though not quite so
obvious, that in order to obtain any trustworthy data for the calculation
whether more such coincidences occur than chance might produce, a very
large mass of material would have to be laid under contribution. Mr.
Gurney was not satisfied that the material he had collected was extensive
enough, and some time after his death, a Committee of five members was
appointed to make a new and more extensive collection, from which it was
hoped to calculate the frequency of hallucinations of the senses among
persons in a normal waking condition, and the proportion of coincidental
cases among hallucinations of the special type defined above. The collection
of material was carried on for a little over three years, and after a study
of it extending over two or three years more, the Committee published
their Report in the Proceedings of the S.P.It., Part XXVI., (Vol. X.) That
Report has, I am afraid, already taken rank as

"A book which there are few to praise,

And none at all to read."

But I still think that it is worth while for any one interested in psychical
research to consider whether the principles of method and reasoning adopted
in it are or are not sound. ALICE JOHNSON.

[See Dr. Hebert's criticism in the Journal for December. — ED.]
Let us now pass on to another dream of Miss Luke, The Robbery.
L. 1095. Ae Ps ; but, before discussing the case, I will make a few
remarks on the origin and modus operandi of dreams. A dream may
originate or, having commenced, may be kept up or varied by impressions
received previously in the waking state, or during sleep before a dream or
during the dream. Thus we often dream of people whom we have quarrelled
with or taken a liking to, because the thought of the event is likely to recur
to us many times, and the toll of a bell, the call of a voice or the occurrence
of a noise, or any other impression, may change the course of a dream
already commenced. I will give some instances.

174 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1898.

(1) Many years ago, when in medical practice in America, I attended a.
young man who had injured himself in a dream. He was sleeping with five
or six companions in a shanty erected within a few feet of the railway track.
They were all brickmakers, and the patient had been at work several
previous nights attending to the fire of a brick kiln. Suddenly in the night
he jumped out of his bed, screaming at the top of his voice, " Run away, or
you will all be killed ! " and in trying to escape he injured both his legs and
fractured one of his ribs, falling over a stool. He afterwards explained that
he was dreaming he was still attending to the firing of the kiln, and that
suddenly he heard a crash and saw the top of the kiln of bricks falling over
him and his companions, so he cried out to them to run away. He could
remember nothing else, and from his own knowledge it would have been
impossible to learn the whole cause of his dream ; but a companion of his
said he was awake, and that a train was passing at the time when his friend
jumped out of bed. The shanty shook every time a train passed. In this-
instance, therefore, the origin of the dream was in a previous impression,
and the noise produced by the train was interpreted in the dreamer's mind
as the crash of the falling brick kiln.

(2) Again, a highly respectable young lady, patient of mine, and fond of
children, often dreams during menstruation that she is confined of a child.
Here the discomfort experienced by the young lady at that time produces an
impression which strikes her in her dream as what she imagines to be the
pain of parturition. The discomfort may be said to produce an impression
before and during the dream.

(3) Since my first criticism was written for the Journal, a young lady
consulted me one day, November 12th, for ear-ache, and informed me that
on the previous night she dreamt that she had the ear-ache, and that when
she woke up she had it in reality. She seemed to think there was something
prophetic in that dream, as she said she was quite well when she went to
bed, but the most plausible explanation is that she took cold during her
sleep, and the consequent pain was the cause of the impression which
resulted in her dream.

(4) For some time past I have had a patient who consulted me
regularly every week on the same day, but who, for some reason or other,
did not call last week. On the following night I dreamt that she called as
usual, and the next day I tried to remember whether I had thought of
the patient during the day which preceded the dream, but could not
recollect any thought I had relating to her. Here it is probable that what
has been termed "unconscious cerebration," but better expressed by the
term " unremembered cerebration," had taken place before the dream.
The patient did not call at all that week, so it was not a telepathic
communication.

(5) Now we will trace the progress of a dream, such as might follow an
impression received during sleep. A man goes to bed covering himself with
an excess of bed clothes ; when on the point of going to sleep, he feels too
warm and protrudes his feet from under the bed clothes. Feeling temporarily
more comfortable, he goes to sleep. After a time, his feet become cold : the

•'\v. is'.is.i Correspondence. 175

same process of reasoning follows that impression as if he were awake. It
is probable that the reaction produced by any impression made upon us is a
more or less unconscious effort to account for the cause or causes of that
impression so as to act accordingly, which effort is directed towards
ascertaining all the factors obtainable by the means at our command which
concur to produce that impression, and, from the result of that effort, our
opinion is formed. In the waking state our senses are immediately brought
into requisition to verify the nature of such impression and rectify any error
of judgment as much as possible. For instance, if you cross the middle over
the index finger and move them over a marble placed between these two
fingers you will receive an impression as if you were touching two marbles.
By the sense of sight you can rectify the error of number and verify the
presence of the marble producing the impression. Were it not for your
sense of sight or some other means of rectifying your error, you would
remain under the impression that you were touching two objects, even in
the waking state ; but, in sleep, you cannot avail yourself of the corrective
influence of your sense of sight ; what we appear to see in dreams is the
result of memory, our sense of hearing is all but suspended, our sensation is
obtused, we are shut off from our actual surroundings, we do not usually
know of our actual condition of sleep, so that an error of judgment being
first made, another is added and so on without any means of rectification
until the result is some fantastic dream such as we remember afterwards.
Now let us return to our dreamer with cold feet. Shut off from the means of
rectifying any error by his senses, the reactive effort to account for his
impression may result in an idea that he is walking barefooted on the cold or
wet pavement, or on snow, which erroneous idea he has no means of
correcting, with the result that it persists, if the feet continue to be cold, and
possibly develops into the idea that he has undertaken a long journey over
the snow and ice to the North Pole ; further, that he meets Professor Andree
and has a long chat with him, the gist of which would be more or less in
accord with the views of the dreamer on that point ; or if the dreamer had a
preconceived idea that Professor Andree had lost his life, he might find him
dead in his dream. Some part of the dream may turn out to be true, and
why not ? Take one hundred people who know nothing of a North Pole
expedition and ask them their views on the result of Andres's expedition and
it would be very surprising if many of them did not say something of it which
turned out to be true. If one opines that he will perish in his attempt to
discover the North Pole, another believes that he will return safe, one of
them must be right in his opinion ; but it does not follow that either should
be a clairvoyant. Thus we may see that the semi-conscious cerebration
which follows an impression in a dream is subjected to the same principles
us cerebration in the waking state ; but, considering the exclusion of the
faculties and senses at rest in sleep, the incoherent train of thought in
dreams is as different from reasoning in the waking state as the result of an
attempt to walk on one leg, the other being tied to the body, would be from
ordinary walking, or the gyrations of a bird with one wing bound from the
graceful flight of one let free.

176 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1898.

With these preliminary remarks we will now proceed to analyse the
dream of Miss Luke entitled " The Robbery. " The first impression which
gave rise to Miss Luke's dream is most probably her missing the alarm clock.
We have her word that she supposed her lodger, Mr. B., had taken it so he
could get up at a particular hour, and that she thought no more about it,
and I believe this, in her knowledge, to be the truth, but cerebration does
not stop with our power of remembering it, as may be observed in dreams
No. 3 and No. 4. She went to bed directly, probably fell asleep in a short
time, and the impression of the missing clock may have developed into a
dream of the robbery with all its details in precisely the same manner as the
impression of the cold feet in example No. 5 developed into a journey to the
North Pole, together with the meeting with Professor Andree. Something
else, however, may have concurred to fix her attention on Mr. and Mrs. L.
She had not known them so long as Mr. B., whom she would probably have
considered most trustworthy ; therefore her suspicions would be aroused
against the former before the latter. This would sufficiently account for the
whole of the dream. Again, we are not told where Miss Luke slept, but
her sister, Mrs. Stallings, reports that Miss Luke told her "I have not
heard a sound from them this morning " ; we are not told, either, if the
robbery occurred in the afternoon or in the night ; perhaps it is not known,
except by the thieves themselves, but it may have been in the night, and, if
so, and Miss Luke slept in a part of the house where she could hear their
movements, it is not improbable that she may have been impressed with
that noise and, coupling it with the impression of the missing clock,
interpreted it in her dream into a robbery and disordered room such as the
young brickmaker in quoted dream No. 1, coupling the noise and shaking of
the shanty, produced by the passing train, with the impression of his
attending to the firing of the kiln, interpreted this in his dream as the falling
of the brick kiln over him and his comrades. Thus the dream might find an
explanation from palpable causes, and further information on the doubtful
points might elucidate the case further.

As to the Albuquerque dream, I must confess that I cannot offer any
explanation. The suppressed particulars might have supplied some clue to an
explanation, and so might have been the case with any statement made by
the father, but unfortunately both these are absent ; but it does not follow
that the dream should be considered an example of clairvoyance or tele-
pathy. It would have been interesting to know how many times Miss Luke
had dreamt about her friend G. during his absence, and the proportion of
her dreams about him which were verified to those which were not, so as to
compare the result with a number of guesses she might have made con-
cerning him in her waking state. Moreover, there is a great deal of
difference of accuracy in writing down a dream before its fulfilment and
putting it down in writing at the time the fulfilment is recorded, though it
may have been told before its fulfilment to some witness, as in the latter
case there is probably always an element of unconscious adaptation of
discrepancies which is entirely absent in the former. In other words, in the
latter case you are told that the dream was the same as the recorded event,

JAN., IH-IK ] Correspond i 177

in tin' otht-r you can verify it yourself. From my own point of view there
is u considerable ettbrt in the report of Miss Luke's dream of the two
weddings to adapt the idea of a communion si-rvict- in her dream to that of
asocial ivivption in the actual occurrence. She says, " With one of these
weddings, and I cannot tell which, there was connected the idea of some
social affair - a reception — and it seemed to me a little queer, and I associated
it with the idea of a communion service carried on in a jolly sort of way."
The explanation sounds to me like this : I dreamt there was a communion
service, but I should have dreamt that it was a social reception, and perhaps
1 did, I am not sure. p y HEBERT, M.D., A.S.P.R.

Nervi, near Genova, Italy, December Wtli, 1897.

SIR, — I am of one mind with Dr. Hebert about the desirability of inviting
comments and opening a general discussion in the Journal, not only on the
cases reported, but on any kind of subject that may happen to come into
consideration. I found not only Dr. Hebert's commentary, but Mr. Bennett's
controversy with Professor Barrett most interesting and profitable.

Some years ago Professor Sidgwick printed in the Journal two series of
diagrams which I had sent by thought-transference to a correspondent at a
distance of many hundred miles. The experiment was a bold one, and had
succeeded so wonderfully that I expected comments about it, and an analysis
of the diagrams, which have never come. Never could chance have given
such a result as was obtained in both series, particularly in the second one ;
and to my mind, at least, the experiment was conclusive.

Well, it attracted no attention, and I have given up sending other
communications of the same kind to the Junnml.

Reverting to the open question of the art of dowsing, I am also of
opinion that the movements of the twig may be produced by some hitherto
unrecognised force in the human organism operating beyond the range of
muscular action in a way analogous to the working of the Riintgen rays or
the Marconi telegraph.

Would it not be possible to replace in the hands of the dowser the
traditional twig by an instrument made in such a way that a hand or needle
be put into motion by that force, if it exist, without any possibility of a muscu-
lar action interfering ? Writing, as I am doing now, in a language foreign to
my Swiss pen, I still hope to have made my meaning intelligible. Something
like a clock or a manometer with a steel hand, by the means of which the
workings of the unknown force could not only be revealed, but measured ?

It seems to me that in this, and in similar subjects, a purely scientific
experimentation ought to be instituted. For instance, such an instrument
as I contemplate could be placed in the hands of a willing medium, able to
produce motions in solid material bodies without material contact. If there
was in his exalted nervous system a force developed capable of producing
motion at a distance, that force would reveal itself on the dial.

Another similar case is that of levitation, which may be produced, I
expect, by the action of an unknown vibration of the nervous system
counteracting the force of gravitation. Why not '>.

178 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 1898.

Well, by obtaining from a medium that he should consent to be entranced
sitting on one of those weighing machines that one finds in all the railway
stations (at least on the Continent), even the faintest diminution of weight
in his body could be perceived and accurately measured. And so on. Of
course, if Dr. Hebert s suggestion were to be acted upon, and members of
the S.P.R. invited to freely state their views and discuss the cases printed
in the Proceedings or the Journal, the Journal would have to be enlarged.
But I expect no one would complain, except perhaps the Treasurer, and
his laments could be disregarded (!). There are, I have no doubt, many
members or associates who could, if there was room for them in the
Journal, forward by their remarks and suggestions the researches of the

Society- • • • AUG. GLARDON.

[We think that Mr. Glardon must be under some misapprehension con-
cerning his experiments in thought-transference at a distance. He has,
perhaps, not noticed the account in the Journal for December, 1896 ? His
first groups of experiments, with plates, were reproduced in the Journal for
June, 1893. " Some time after this account appeared, Mr. Glardon sent us
two more sets of experiments of the same kind, with the information that he
was still continuing the experiments. As no further report of these has yet
reached us, we give here an account of all hitherto received." This passage is
quoted from the Journal for December, 1896, and is followed by the account, in
the course of which it is said : ' ' We think that the degree of resemblance on the
whole is decidedly beyond what could reasonably be attributed to chance." And
in the last paragraph the hope was expressed "that the publication of these
experiments may encourage other members of the Society to make similar
attempts, and record them with equal care and precision." It would appear
that Mr. Glardon was waiting for the printing of the accounts which he had
sent, and that the Editor was waiting for Mr. Glardon to communicate the
results of his further experiments ; that finally the Editor, in despair
of receiving any further accounts, — (how well we know such disappointed
hopes !) — printed what he had in hand ; but that Mr. Glardon had before
then become tired of looking in the Journal for his accounts which did not
appear, and is still unaware that they have appeared. "Alas, how easily
things go wrong!" Records of such experiments are just what we especially
desire. We submitted Mr. Glardon's letter to Professor Barrett, to whose
energy, it will be remembered, the original establishment of the Journal
was due, and who was himself the first Editor. His remarks are
appended. — ED.]

6, De Vesci Terrace, Kingstown, Co. Dublin.

I quite agree with Mr. Glardon!s remarks upon the usefulness of the
Journal being open to discussion on the part of the members of the S.P.ll.
But this, I believe, has always been the case, subject of course to the
discretion of the Editor.

With regard to the observations on the motion of the forked twig in
dowsing, a wise scientific axiom compels us to exhaust known causes in
explanation of any novel phenomena before resorting to an unkn own cause.

Supplementary Library Catalogue. 179

Unconscious muscular action is a well recognised cause of many startling
phenomena, and it cannot bo said we have as yet exhausted its possibilities
in connection with the motion of the divining rod. A .simpler test than that
suggested by Mr. Glardon is to ask the dowser lightly to hold the ends of
the forked twig in a small bundle of cotton wool, placed in each hand. The
KMSI muscular pressure on the part of the dowser thus reveals itself in the
ouiipivssion of the wool. Under these circumstances, I have not yet been
able to h'nd a dowser who can cause the twig to rotate, much less effect the
fracture of one limb. This is the same test which we employed long ago to
indicate the part played by unconscious muscular guidance in the so-called
-willing game." W.F.BARRETT.

SUPPLEMENTARY LIBRARY CATALOGUE.

Additions since t/te last list (JOURNAL for December, 1896).

THE EDMUND GURNEY LIBRARY.

DAILEY (Abram H.), Mollie Fancher, the Brooklyn Enigma. An

Authentic Statement of Facts in the Life of Mary J. Fancher.

Brooklyn, 1894
DEE (Dr. John), On Spirits. With a Preface by M. Casaubon, D.D.

London, 1659
JAMKS (William), The Will to Believe, and other Essays in Popular

Philosophy ......................................................... New York, 1897

MASON (R. Osgood, M.D.), Telepathy and the Subliminal Self

London, 1897
PARISH (Edmund), Hallucinations and Illusions. A Study of the

Fallacies of Perception ............................................. London, 1897

PODMORE (Frank, M.A.), Studies in Psychical Research ...... London, 1897*

RAYMOND (Rossiter, W.), The Divining Rod. (Transaction* of the

American Institute of Mining Engineers, 1883) ..................... 1883

SCRIPTURE (E. W., Ph.D.), The New Psychology ............... Londnn, 1897

WALDSTEIN (Louis, M.D.), The Sub-conscious Self and its Relation

to Education and Health ................................ .......... London, 1897

WOODS (John F., M.D.), The Treatment by Suggestion, with and

without Hypnosis. (Reprinted from the Journal of Mental

Science, April 1897.) ............................................... London, 1897*

(L'Abb^), Hydroscopographie et Metalloscopographie, ou 1'art

de de'couvrir les eaux souterraines .............................. Saintes, 1863

CHAUVIN (Dr.), [The Original Report on Jacques Ay mar.] Le

Journal des Scavans, January, 1693 . ............................ Paris, 1693

FIGUIER (Louis), Histoire du Marveilleux. 4 Vols ............. Paris, 1881-89

LAURENT (Dr. L.), Des Etats Seconds, Variations Pathologiques du

Champ de la Conscience ............................................. Paris, 1892

LEBRUN (Le Pere, S.J.), Lettres qui d^couvrent I'lllusion des

Philosophes sur la Baguette .......................................... Paris, lli'.t.'!

- Histoire Critique des Pratiques Superstitieuses ............ Paris, 170U

* Presented by the Author.

180 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JAN., 189&

PARAMELLE (L'Abbe), L'Art de decouvrir les Sources. [New Edition.}

Paris, 1896
ESSAY ON HYDROSCOPIE (about 1'Abbe" Paramelle), Journal

d' Agriculture Pratique, April, 1845 Paris, 1845

THOUVENEL (Dr.), M&noire Physique et Medicinal . . . de la

Baguette Divinatoire Paris, 1781

VALLEMONT (L'Abbe de), La Physique Occulte, ou Traite de la

Baguette Divinatoire Amsterdam, 1693

ALBINUS (Theophilus), Das entlarvete Idolum der Wiinschel-ruthe

Dresden, 1704
BENEDIKT (Prof. Dr. Moritz), Hypnotismus und Suggestion... Leipziij, 1894

Du PREL (Carl), Die Wiinschel-ruthe circ. 1890

HANSEN (F. C. C. und A. LEHMANN), Ueber unwillkiirliche
Fliistern ; eine kritische und experimentalische Untersuchung
der Sogenannten Gedanken-uebertragung. (Reprinted from

Wundt's Philosophische Studien, XI. , 4. ) Leipziy, 1897

WILLEN (Matthew), Die Wiinschel-ruthe. Together with a German
translation of Abbe de Vallemont's Physica Occulta. Illustrated

Nurembeifj, 1694

SEMENTINI (L.), Pensieri e Sperimenti sulla Baccheta Divinatoria

Naples, 1810

VIRGULA METALLICA (De), Mescellania Curiosa. Academic Ciesaro-

Leopoldinee Frankfort, 1697

THE GENERAL LIBRARY.

BANCROFT (Hubert), Threads of Philosophy London, N.D.

Cox (Mr. Sergeant), On Some of the Phenomena of Sleep and

Dreams London, 1875

FARMER (John S.), How to Investigate Spiritualism London, 1882

LANG (Andrew), The Book of Dreams and Ghosts London, 1897

"LIGHT." Bound Volume for 1896 London, 1896*

M.A. (Oxon.) [W. Stainton Moses.] Psychography. (2nd Edition.)

London, 1882

MIRACLES (The, of Madame Saint Katherine of Fierbois). Translated
from the Edition of the Abbe J. J. Bourasse, by Andrew Lang

London, 1897t

MORGAN (R. C.), An Enquiry into Table Miracles Bath, N.D.|

PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW (The), (June, 1879-Feb., 1883, incomplete)

London, 1879-83
SWEDENBORG (E. ), The Intercourse between the Soul and Body

London, 1867

DENIS (Astere), La Telepathic Verviers, 1895§

DURVILLE (H.), Traite Experimental de Magnetisme. 2 Vols. Pa* is, 1895-96 §

GARDY (Louis), Le Medium D. D. Home Paris, N.D.§

GRANGE (H. L.), Le Prophete de Tilly Paris, 1897§

REGNAULT (Dr. Felix), Hypnotisme Religion Paris, 1897

* Presented by the London Spiritualist Alliance.

f Presented by the Translator. J Presented by Mr. James Britten.

§ Presented by the Author.

No. OXLVI. -VOL. VIII. FKIIIIUAKV, 1898.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

Correspondence : —

Mr. Poilinore and the "Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism" 181

The Value of Complex Coincidences .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 183

The "Spirit Hypothesis" and Mrs. Piper 184

Criticism of Cases 186

Recent Cases . 19-2

CORRESPONDENCE.

[The Editor in not, responsible for opinions expressed bit Correspondents.]

MR. PODMORE AND THE "PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM."

38, Sergievskaia, St. Petersburg, December 19th, 1897.

DEAR SIR, — I should like, with your permission, to make a few remarks
on Mr. Podmore's attitude towards the " Physical Phenomena of Spiritual-
ism " as revealed in his recent and most valuable work, Studies in Psychical
Research.

Whilst fully admitting the unsatisfactory character of much that is con-
sidered as "evidence " by Spiritualists, and the possibility even of intelligent
and educated witnesses making frequent errors in observation, I cannot but
think that Mr. Podmore refers far too often to Mr. Davey's experiments to
explain " Poltergeist " cases, and the like. For such an explanation, if
sound, would necessarily involve : (1) The similarity in character of both
groups of facts. Now this is far from true. In Mr. Davey's experiments
we have a complicated succession of incidents. In some "Poltergeist"
cases, as well as in Home's phenomena, it is just the reverse. The
manifestations are of a very simple kind, and consequently much more
likely to be remembered and described correctly (see, e.;/., some of the
movements of objects in the Worksop case and in the Dialectical Society's
experiments. It is infinitely easier to make oneself sure of the fact that no
one was touching a t;ible when it moved, than that one has never lost one
or two or three slates from view in the course of several minutes). (2) The
second point is still more important. In Mr. Davey's case we have unques-
tionable evidence that he was a conjurer of exceptionable ability. Many
years will perhaps pass before the world sees another one like him. That it
was so is proved by his having baffled several conjurers ; and there can be
no doubt that most other people would have failed altogether under the

182 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1898.

same conditions that did not prevent him from deceiving his sitters. NOAV
I ask, what kind of proof have we got that Eliza R. (in the Worksop case)
or Emma D., (in the Wem case) or the Durweston girls or the members of
the Dialectical Society, or, indeed, Home himself, were conjurers as good as
Davey ? None whatever. In fact the contrary may be considered as certain,
so far, at least, as the Durweston girls or Emma D. or Eliza R. are con-
cerned. I therefore submit that it is unscientific to attribute to all these
people exceptional faculties for which we have evidence in Davey's case only.
Speaking for myself, for instance, I can say that if "manifestations" of a
much less striking character than Davey's ever took place in my presence,
it would have been absurd to put them down to conjuring on my part, a
thing of which I am quite incapable. Now I see very little reason for
thinking Eliza R., for instance, more adroit than myself ; and at any rate
none at all for putting her on a par with Davey, with his years of training
and practice.

Then after reading Mr. Podmore's account of slate-writing stances, an
uninitiated reader would naturally draw the conclusion that in each and
every case the writing is done out of sight. But this is incorrect. For we
have at least one well authenticated case in which the pencil was seen to
write. I refer to Dr. Elliott Coues and Mr. Emmette Coleman's experi-
ments with the medium Mrs. Francis (of San Francisco), in 1891 (and
described, J think, in the JReligio- Philosophical Journal, of February 2nd,
1892). These gentlemen repeatedly saw the pencil in motion. In some
cases the slate had been partly withdrawn from under the table after the
sound of writing had begun ; in other cases no table was used at all, only a
handkerchief being thrown over the slate to protect it from the sun-rays ;
and finally Mrs. Francis held a slate in her hand in full view, and a whole
sentence was written under the eyes of the observers. Now, taking into
account Mr. Emmette Coleman's notoriety as an exposer of fraudulent
mediums and their methods, we may well ask Mr. Podmore what has he
to say to that ? And may not the omission of such a fact from his review
of the evidence leave an altogether erroneous impression in the mind of the
reader? And does not its reality "knock on the head" all the elaborate
theories put forward to explain "slate-writing" 1

With regard to Home's phenomena, though Mr. Podmore does not
pretend to " expose " them, he nevertheless puts forward a theory for which
again we have no scientific evidence whatever ; at any rate much less than
for the ' ' Physical Phenomena " themselves, viz. : that hallucinations may
be simultaneously suggested to several sane arid intelligent observers. Every
time an experiment was devised to prove the objectivity (not necessarily
the genuineness) of a mediumistic phenomenon, it has invariably succeeded ;
I mean it has proved that objectivity — which we are therefore entitled to
assume in other similar cases donee probetur contrarium. This is simple logic.

I should also like to know why Mr. Podmore does not consider Dr.
Dariex's case of the spontaneous overturning of chairs (Proceedings of the
S.P.B., Vol. VII., p. 194) as even primd facie evidence for the operation of
.an unknown force (since he does not mention it at all). It seems to me, on

FBB., is: is. | Correspondence. 183

the contrary, that there are few more conclusive " telekinetic " facts on
record. It is also a pity that, though he mentions Sir W. Crookes'g test
experiment with Mrs. A. E. Fay, he does not attempt an explanation. — I
a,,,, dear Sir, yours very truly, MICHAEL PKTROVO-SOLOVOVO.

THE VALUE OF COMPLEX COINCIDENT

Lambourne Rectory, Romford, Essex.

SIR, — Miss Alice Johnson's letter in the current number of the Journal
has revived thoughts as to the value of coincidences, which, although they
help to explain convictions apparently based on insufficient data, seem to
me not to have received so much attention as they deserve. Mr. Gurney
has touched upon them incidentally in Chap. xiii. of Pliantasnis of the
Lirin't, but even he, if I am not mistaken, has not clearly recognised their
importance. The point I wish to make is this : A coincidence may be
simple or complex. In the cases examined by the Society many involve
complex coincidences, and these lose in evidential value if they are treated
along with others which are simple. To make my meaning plain let me
suppose a few cases.

Suppose then that A thinks of B's death at a certain time, and that,
about that time, B dies. Here the coincidence may be casual or it may
indicate some connection — director indirect — between A's mind and B's.
Mere coincidence may be a sufficient explanation, though it may be
doubtful, on the theory of chance, as to whether it is or no.

But suppose B falls overboard and is drowned, and A has a vivid impres-
sion of the scene, or of the fact that B has died by drowning. Here, there
is not merely (1) the coincidence between B's death and A's impression ;
there is (2) the further coincidence between the manner of B's death and
the character of A's impression ; and (3) there is the coincidence that these
two coincidences themselves coincide. Here the cumulating coincidences
make it far more improbable that chance alone can have occasioned them ;
unless A knows that B is a sailor or on a voyage, in which case the thought
of his death might suffice to suggest the circumstances, and the coincidence
would be a simple one in spite of its complexity of form.

Suppose lastly that A knows nothing of B's circumstances, and that
about the time of his death — or of some notable incident in his experience
— he has a vivid impression of B's condition, with what has happened to
him, and the associated circumstances. Here there are any number of coin-
cidences— the coincidence is cumulative and complex — and chance, pi-ovided
our data are correct, is no longer credible when it offers to explain tlu'in.

Now we have apparently well authenticated cases of tin's last kind, and,
it seems to me, if the evidence is to be credited, that they make so strongly
in one direction that no application of the theory of chance drawn from
-simple coincidences has any bearing on them. But if they are independent
of chance, then, possibly, the simpler cases are so also. We have evidenre
for supernormal transmission of impressions which, if once granted, may
explain all cases.

184 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1898.

My personal opinions are of no importance, but study of the evidence
which has been gathered by the Society has led me to the conclusion that
little is to be hoped for from further application of the Theory of Chances.
If the cumulatively complex coincidence is possible, chance cannot account
for it, and we must assume some law which will equally well explain other
cases. The question which seems of most importance is as to the true
value of the evidence ; and this becomes the more complicated the more
impartially and carefully it is considered. We cannot photograph the
original impression, and we cannot be sure that the description given by the
most honest witnesses is not misleading. An imaginative element will
creep in, however much we may try to guard against it, and we do not know
what really happened though we know what an honest witness says, and
thinks, has happened. The impression, upon which all depends, is
received, often enough, days before it is confirmed. Notes are made of it
" at the time," letters are sometimes written to describe it ; yet, when asked
for, neither notes or letters are forthcoming ; or, if they chance to have
been preserved, they are expressed so vaguely as to be practically worth-
less. The mere fact that they cannot be produced shows that their
importance was not realised at the time, and yet surely it would have been
had the impressions described been as varied and as vivid as imagination
represents them ! I am sufficiently credulous to think it probable that
crucial cases — where the cumulative complexity of the coincidence would
defy chance — have occurred ; but it seems to me we shall gain more by
documentary evidence for their reality, before it has been possible to con-
firm them, than by any amount of calculations founded on theories of chance
or probability. Prove one such case and it carries the probability of a
hundred others, but so long as we have only post confirmation evidence the
manifold infirmities of human testimony confound us. — Yours truly,

C. A. GOODHART.

THE "SPIRIT HYPOTHESIS" AND MRS. PIPER.
To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

Travellers' Club, Pall Mall, S.W., January 7th, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — Had time allowed I should have liked to have explained
more fully at the last General Meeting why I could not agree to the so-called
"Spiritualistic explanation" of the phenomena exhibited through Mrs.
Piper ; and I should be glad if you could find space in the Journal for a few
remarks on the subject.

In the first place, then, I object to such phrases as " Spirit Identity, "
" Discarnate Souls," and the like, as misleading or. at any rate, valueless,
not so much because they convey definite ideas that are false as because
they convey very little meaning at all ; and their use in questions of
psychic research may tend to keep alive crudely materialistic notions
concerning our spiritual existence. There arc, I believe, a large number
of individuals who, having come across certain physical and biological
phenomena, which happen for the moment to be discredited by the world in

FEB., is: is.] ('<»-,•> «i>i>n<lviice.

general, have chosen to style themselves "Spiritualists" and have evolved
among themselves a theory of "the other life" which every true believer
must accept. This "theory" seems to be that our bodies are animated by
an independent and detachable concrete entity, a sort of lump of spirit in
human form, which flies out of the body at death, or sometimes even during
lifi>, carrying with it the true personality, the real self in a permanent
condition. These souls, or spirits, are capable of moving about in space, of
going to Heaven or elsewhere, and of returning occasionally to this earthly
life to perform all sorts of marvellous feats, which never can be properly
explained or understood without a frank acknowledgment of their existence
as the true cause.

It seems, moreover, to be the fashion among Spiritualists to insist that
anyone who does not believe in these lumps of spirit must necessarily be a
" materialist," one who denies that there can be any vehicle of life, or energy
other than the tangible matter with which he is familiar.

I say that the phrase " Spirit Identity " is either absurd or else it is vague
or misleading.

Let me illustrate my meaning by reference to a well-known natural
phenomenon. Let us picture to ourselves the course of a tornado, such as
not infrequently visit certain parts of the globe. A tornado is a powerful
whirlwind, about a hundred yards or so in diameter, with a progressive
motion extending over several miles. Now, considered from a narrow and
superficial point of view, the tornado may seem to some to have an isolated
individual existence, independent of its effects and surroundings, though, of
course, thoughtful people know that this cannot be the case. We know that
the various particles of matter which are set in violent motion by its energy
are continually changing ; yet we should say, and say correctly, that it was
the same tornado that visited various points throughout its course ; and that
it was the same identical tornado that did a variety of different kinds of
damage. What, then, is it that is the same, seeing that the actual matter set
in motion varies from moment to moment ? The phenomenon shows con-
tinuity and duration, that's all. When the tornado has passed, the self-same
energy, upon which its force depended, is, our scientific knowledge convinces
us, still existing, in some state or other ; the natural laws under which it
acted continue to prevail, and the various effects of the storm remain ; but
we do not find it necessary to postulate, as perhaps some savages would, that
some permanent spirit entity of malignant purpose was the real storm and
survives it. Thus, in the case of Mrs. Piper's " Intelligences," there is most
probably some definite though transcendental connection between some of
the phenomena exhibited and the past or even future life of the individual
persons concerned; and, indeed, many of the "communications" may, in
themselves, be of the greatest interest and value ; but it seems to me that
the elucidation of the mystery involved is not in the slightest degree advanced
by the help of the "spirit hypothesis."

I would go even further and say that, even apart from any endeavour to
explain a future life in another world, this conception of a permanent spirit
entity underlying our individual existence is worse than useless ; it is a

186 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1898.

pernicious delusion, having a baneful influence in this world and responsible
for much of the egotism, greed and malignity with which our present lives
are afflicted. -Yours faithfully, ST> GEQRGE LANE.FOX>

CRITICISM OF CASES.
To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

I have read with much interest the intelligent remarks of Miss Johnson
published in the Journal for January upon my article which appeared in
the previous number. The gist of her criticism appears to be that my
disquisition was irrelevant to the subject for the following reasons : 1st,
because the Editor cautions his readers against assuming that every incident
recorded is to be regarded as evidence of something supernormal : 2nd,
because my explanation is not new ; 3rd, because almost all the work of the
S.P.ll., from its foundation to the present day, has been directed towards,
testing the adequacy of the principle of my unoriginal explanation in the
case of psychical phenomena ; 4th, because she does not quite understand
how I propose to cultivate the power of differentiation between a coincidence
and the relation of cause and effect of two events ; 5th, because I do not
offer any criticism of the way in which the Society has attempted to deal
with the question ; and, 6th, because the question is not one which can be
decided by an appeal to common sense and a study of individual cases.

1st. Surely the warning could not be intended for me, as no one who has
read my article could come to the conclusion that I assume the report I
criticise to be evidence of anything supernormal. But does Miss Johnson
mean that I should not criticise it as such ? Then in that case it should
also be noted that the Editor elsewhere tells us that " any well attested
information bearing on the various subjects which are being investigated by
the Society (viz. : supernormal occurrences) will be gratefully received," etc. ;
but nowhere invites the report of anything which is not supernormal — if I
may except hypnotism or mesmerism. This, from my point of view, justifies
me in inferring that the cases published in the Journal are offered to the
readers as, in the opinion of the reporters of them, supernormal occurrences.
The idea of reporting cases as being supernormal occurrences in the Journal
and asking the readers not to criticise them as such would show that this is
their weak point. It reminds me of the pugilist Peter Jackson when he
was at the Aquarium. At the time that I have in my mind he had a sore
nose, and he was hesitating in boxing as usual, but, being pressed, he said
to his opponent, ' ' I am willing to box with you if you will not hit me
on the nose." The opponent tacitly agreed, but it was too much for him, as
the first thing he did was to punch the black pugilist on the nose, because
he saw it was his weak point. However, I will say this much : What the
Editor does, I think, is to disclaim any responsibility for opinions expressed
or implied by reporters or correspondents, and he publishes such cases for
consideration and criticism by the members, and that is why I criticise them.

2nd. Truly, I did not offer my explanation as an original one, but
considering the fitness of its application to the dream of the "Two

Fun., 1808.] Correspondence. 187

Weddings," I thought it would bear repeating for the purpose, as I also
gave my reasons for its application to it. I have no special predilection for
new idi-.-is when old ones answer better, and I fail to see that an explanation
loses any of its value by simply saying that it is not new. When a man
tills me «»r implies to me that the earth is flat, I generally reply by
i-xpoiuiding the principle of Copernicus, and so long as some men will hold
the view that the earth is flat, so long will the Copernican doctrine bear
repeating, notwithstanding that it has already been repeated thousands
upon thousands of times since it was originated.

3rd. This argument implies that if 1 realised that so much of the work
of the S.P.R. had been directed towards testing the adequacy of my un-
original explanation, I should not have brought it forward ; but I contend
that, not only would it be necessary to show that the work of the S.P.R.
had been so directed, but also that the Society had evolved some principle
to prove or imply the inadequacy of my explanation. Miss Johnson does
not mention anything of the kind, and, therefore, 1 find no reason for her
assumption that I do not realise the importance of a work, which she does
not say proves anything in favour of such assumption. It could only be in
case the Society had settled the point that such an argument could be urged
against me, but Miss Johnson does not say it has, and my explanation still
stands as good as before.

4th. I think I have expressed very plainly in my article how I propose to
cultivate the power of differentiation between a coincidence and a causal
relation of two events. Just before the quotation from my article by Miss
Johnson, I said, "the expression of different views would thus provide a
school of training in scientific methods of investigation " after suggesting
that comments should be published expressing the views of the members
individually upon the degree of value of the evidence, and upon the degree
of relation between the different events recorded. Does Miss Johnson deny
or doubt that such exchange of views would cultivate and improve the faculty
of observation among the members ? For instance, Miss Johnson thinks
with me that there is very little evidence of anything beyond chance in the
coincidence of two events in Miss Luke's dream of the " Two Weddings " ;
but she thinks also that Miss Luke's other experiences, in w Inch she says the
evidence appears somewhat better, should be allowed to weigh a little in
estimating this one. Upon this point I think differently ; I do not admit
that a case which might be true should be allowed to weigh anything in
favour of one that is false in estimating different cases, as statistics or the
theory of probability cannot apply in deciding upon individual cases. Nor
do I think even that the evidence of the " Robbery " is any better than
that of the "Two Weddings," as can be seen by my explanation of it in the
January number of the Journal to account for it by known laws. It rests
with Miss Johnson to give her own version of it by accounting for it by laws
governing supernormal occurrences which can be traced or recognised, and
her explanation, if satisfactory, might lead me to adopt her views, or to
improve mine. This is the way that I proposed to cultivate our powers of
discrimination ; more by discussing cases than by criticising methods or

188 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1898.

theories. If, for instance, we can explain some cases on natural grounds by
accounting for their occurrence from known laws, we exclude them from the
necessity of a survey into a spiritual world to find their causes. If then, we
proceed from individual cases to classes of cases and eliminate these in a
similar manner, we again narrow the field of our investigation. If, for
example, we explain every phase of dreams by normal causes, we naturally
come to the conclusion that they are subjected to the same laws as our
actions in the waking state ; then we shall not deem it more surprising if we
dream of anything which subsequently occurs than when, in the waking
state, we anticipate something which does occur, and we may come to the
conclusion that forebodings of -all kinds are due to previous impressions.
Again, if we look beyond the mere fact of coincidence, and study all the
circumstances we can, surrounding apparently supernormal occurrences, we
will often find a clue to an explanation. Imagine, as an illustration of my
meaning, a husband going to war, leaving his family in tears. His wife
expresses her fear that he may never return to her alive, which is a very
legitimate fear under the circumstances. He encourages her, saying that
God will surely protect him for her sake and their children's ; this lights up
» hope in her heart which makes her feel confident that he will return safe to
her. She may call this a presentiment, a foreboding, or anything you like,
but it is a very usual apprehension of danger coming or hope of escaping
it, but the two sides present themselves alike before her mind. After his
departure she thinks of him continually, she dreams many times that she
has seen him well, that he is wounded, that he is dead. In her waking state
and in her dreams he is continually the object of her thoughts. What
wonder that once it might happen at nearly the same time as the real thing
occurs. The whole panorama of what might possibly occur goes through her
mind so many times that it seems probable enough that whilst he is being
shot she may think or dream of it. Then if he returns she can say she knew
he would return ; if he does not, she can say she had a presentiment of it
when he left her and said so, and can probably call witnesses to corroborate
her statement and in both cases she would be right ; but the fact that she
viewed both sides with uncertainty precludes the idea of any supernormal
agency at work. Again, it is not unreasonable that if her husband is killed
she may lay more stress upon the presentiment of fear she had at the time
of his departure than upon the gleam of hope she also had, but which she
practically forgets under the circumstances of the influence of her grief, and
eo would she forget her presentiment of fear under the influence of the
delight which his safe return would produce in her, and, in that state of
conviction, it would be almost superhuman on her part not to stretch a
point and go a little beyond accuracy in her attempt to convince a sceptical
listener that not only were her facts correctly observed but also her
theory accurate, which theory it is very difficult, not to say impossible,
for her to consider apart from such observed facts. The coincidence of
different unrelated events is also worthy of consideration. It is difficult to
grasp the idea of the tumultuousness of various incidents which occur in
this busy world, and a simplified analogy may perhaps convey a more

Fun., iHits.] Correspondence.

jnvcise notion of it than an observation of the world itself. Let me, there-
i'ore, introduce my readers into a clockmaker's establishment, containing
ml hundred clocks keeping time, as a miniature representation of the
world at work producing incidents. These would be represented by the
ticks of the clocks, and so we could alter our statement quoted by Miss
.lohnson " There are so many incidents which occur in this world that many
"t them must necessarily coincide" into the more simple one of " There are
so many ticks which occur in this establishment that many of them must
necessarily synchronise." In fact, if we give a moment's attention to the
behaviour of the clocks, we will find that the ticks of two clocks which do
not synchronise continually get nearer and nearer in time until they do
synchronise .and then depart more from that synchronism until they again
Infill to get nearer and nearer in time and so on ; a further observation may
disclose the fact that one of the clocks sometimes strikes the hours exactly
at the time that another non-striking clock marks it exactly ; or sometimes
that two synchronous ticks are emitted from two clocks painted red or having
a similar case. Now the question which so often crops up, viz. : Why did
two such events occur simultaneously ? Why did Miss Luke, for instance,
dream of being robbed on the night that she was robbed ? may well find a coun-
terpart here. Why did these particular clocks tick together at that particular
time ? Why did a clock strike the hour at the time a non-striking clock was
marking it ? Why did two clocks which were painted red tick together
•and not two painted differently ? And although the querist may admit that
there is no causal relation between the non-synchronous ticks of two clocks,
he may not so easily come to the same conclusion with regard to the ticks
which do synchronise and more especially with regard to the clocks that
are painted alike. But, looking at the result from a broad point of view, we
find an adequate cause in each clock for all the ticks that it emits,
.synchronous and non-synchronous alike, without linking them with any
mysterious cause ; and, if we do not find an adequate cause, we cannot
accept an evidence of mere coincidence as a proof of causal relation without
understanding in some degree, as far as our mind is capable of appreciating
it, the mode of action of that cause or the principle upon which it works, and
we must acknowledge our ignorance in the matter instead of resting satisfied
with an inadequate interpretation. It is very little indeed that we do under-
stand of the action of causes ; but, so far as we do, we must expect and
require it before accepting any theory as fact. The possibility of any thing
which I admit almost any where does not prove in any way its actuality.

Miss Johnson then asks "What exactly — apart from metaphysics — do
we mean by the relation of cause and effect 1 Do we mean anything more
than that two events have occurred so often together that mankind have
Agreed to consider that they are causally connected 1 The two events may
be of an absolutely diverse kind, such as a man walking across the street,
and my consciousness of seeing him do it. The only ground I have for
assuming that my perception is caused by his action, is that the two events
have so often occurred together." I do not think it would be at all desirable
to enter into an elaborate philosophical discussion about the nature of the

190 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1898..

connection of cause and effect as conceived by the human mind, which
would not be relevant to our subject nor probably interesting to the general
readers of this Journal. The main point at issue is this : The position-
assumed by Miss Johnson, which is, in substance, the doctrine of causality
advocated by Dr. Brown or a modification of it, is as follows : We observe
the occurrence of two events together repeatedly and, in the course of time
and in proportion to the frequency of such occurrence, we agree to consider-
that they are causally connected. The only ground we have to come to such
agreement is that of frequency of occurrence. This theory considers the
two events as isolated facts, and does not admit the necessity of the effect
following the cause, nor our being able to understand, in any degree, how
the cause acts to bring about the effect. It means, in the first instance, that,
if a spark emitted from a white hot poker into a heap of gunpowder causes
it to explode, another heap of the same kind, in the same condition, may or
may not be exploded by thrusting the poker into it emitting a thousand
similar sparks, and, in the second, that a man who goes to Maskelyne and
Cooke and sees one of their tricks performed, but cannot understand how
it is done, knows as much about it as the man who does the trick. But,
moreover, we have many instances in the world in which frequency is not
taken as a guide to convince us of the relation of cause and effect, and the
following are very conclusive to me. In 1846, Leverrier wrote to Dr. Galle,
astronomer to the Royal Observatory at Berlin, informing him of the
conclusion he had arrived at by calculations, and requesting him to direct his.
telescope to a certain point which he indicated in the heavens, where he
expected an unknown planet to be visible. The Doctor did so and, on that
same night, found the planet as indicated by Leverrier. This was how the
planet Neptune was discovered. Now, the element of frequency could have
had nothing to do with the idea of cause and effect in this instance, as the;
planet was never observed by Leverrier before he drew his inferences from
the disturbances which he had observed in the planet Uranus. The answer
which would be given by the advocates of the doctrine referred to would
probably be that the observation of other events under similar conditions
had led to the inference ; but this could not apply to this particular instance
where one of the events had never been observed, and it can only be through
the knowledge of the mode of action of a cause that such inference can be
drawn. One more example where the frequency principle although present
does not lead to any inference. Cocks crow before sunrise, and continue to-
do so until the luminary is above the horizon and, needless to say, these two
events have happened innumerable times together, and yet I have never
heard anyone suggest that cock crowing contributed anything in causing the
sun to rise above the horizon. All that we learn, apart from history taken
in its broadest sense, is the result of a more or less accurate interpretation
of the relation of cause and effect, all mental progress is to be attributed
to the same cause. The training of the mechanic, for instance, and his
superiority or inferiority are due to his more or less correct interpretation of
the relation of cause and effect which he realises and carries out in the
manipulation of his tools so as to bring about certain results to attain his

FEB., 1898.] Correspondence. 191

object ; but, of course, this interpretation, like any other knowledge, is only
ivl.it i\v and partial. Miss Johnson further says : " Suppose, however, that
I constantly had this impression and that there was sometimes a real man in
the street at the time, and sometimes not. How could we tell whether — on
the occasion when the man was there — there was, or was not, any connection
between his presence and my impression ? " As I hold the view that no
spi'i'i;il i-H'uct can be produced without a special cause, and no cause can act
without producing an effect, it follows that I consider that what is produced
by the presence of the man walking across the street cannot identically be
produced in his absence, and the impression which could be produced in his
absence could be distinguished from that produced by his presence by an
adequate interpretation of the relation of cause and effect in the case. Miss
Johnson seems to pin her faith to statistics and the chances of probability to
effect such distinction. I do not. Statistics can only be useful when a large
number of cases under a supposed influence can be compared with a similar
number removed from that influence, but the cases of supernormal occur-
rences as admitted by Miss Johnson are comparatively so few that statistics
can be of no avail. Moreover, statistics cannot test the degree of value of
the evidence, which is the main thing in these cases. It follows, therefore,
that I do not imply, as stated by Miss Johnson in her article, that the main
problem before the S.P.R. is of the nature she describes: The object of the
Society being the investigation of cases, its problem is to collect the evidence
which will link these supernormal occurrences with their causes by a
necessary sequence, in such a way as to be able to distinguish the conditions
under which such causes will act to produce such effects. Miss Johnson,
according to the doctrine of causality which she advocates, regards the two
events as isolated facts, not linked by a necessary sequence, and, therefore,
excludes the subject of their relation from consideration. Hence the
difference of our views.

5th. Miss Johnson says that I do not offer any criticism of the way in
which the Society has attempted to deal with the problem in question. I
cannot see how any censure can be passed upon what I have not said. I
never proposed such a thing. I only suggested the criticism of cases. A
variety of methods is most desirable under the circumstances.

6th. The question can only be decided by proof, and to know whether it
is proved or not, we must use our common sense. In investigating, we may
disregard the guidance of common sense if, by that, we mean the employ-
ment of the empirical method of investigation, but we can ill afford to part
with such a valuable friend in any kind of action. Moreover, I am decidedly
of opinion that the study of individual cases is the means of determining
the degree of relation which may exist between their occurrence and their
supposed causes, and it was this opinion which suggested to me the idea of
criticising the various cases in the Journal.

In my last article I suggested a substitute for the expression "uncon-
scious cerebration," but I think it was not a good selection 1 made. The
objection, I find, to the expression is that cerebration, being the response to
or result of some impulse, internal or external, some degree of consciousness

192 Journal of Society for Psycliical Research. [FEB., 1898.

of that impulse must take place to excite cerebration, but such cerebration
may not be memorised, so that we cannot remember it. By substituting
" unremembered cerebration " it would imply simply that the cerebration is
not at the time of speaking remembered, but, under such circumstances, it
may have been memorised and remembered subsequently many times, though
forgotten at the time of speaking. The expression which I wish to sub-
stitute is " unmemorised cerebration," that is cerebration which has never

been in the memory. ~

P. Z. HEBERT, M.D.

RECENT CASES.

L. 1099. An Pn

The following account was received from one of our Associates who
wishes that the names and address should not be given.

To the Editor of the JOURNAL.

Cheltenham, December lUh, 1897.

DEAR SIR, — I send you a coincidence — there must occur frequently many
similar ones. Are they coincidences ? or can they be made amenable to any

known law ? . . . /c-- j\ ™T A -\

(Signed) [MR. A.]

Coincidence ?

My wife was walking with her married daughter in Cheltenham to-day,
December llth, and when they arrived at Montpellier Walk, about the
centre of the town, my wife remarked to her daughter that she would like
to receive some information about a lady whom she had met several years
ago at her daughter's bungalow in Ceylon. They continued talking of this
lady for some minutes, and were much surprised to find on their return home
that the lady in question had called only half-an-hour previously, and
expressed great regret at not finding them at home, as she had to leave
Cheltenham by the next train. The coincidence is rendered the more
remarkable by the fact that my son-in-law had met the lady, at the exact
spot in the town where, about half-an-hour afterwards, my wife had the
impression that she would like to receive some news about her. I may add
that the lady does not live at, or near, Cheltenham, and beyond knowing
that she had left Ceylon, and was residing in England, neither my wife nor
daughter knew where she was living, or had the remotest idea that she was
in Cheltenham, and would call upon them.

In reply to inquiries we received the three following letters : —

Cheltenham, December 17th, 1897.

DEAR SIR, — On the morning of the llth inst. I met Miss M. on Mont-
pellier Walk. She had been to call on my wife, and, failing to find her at
home, was walking down town in hopes of meeting her. I turned and
walked with Miss M. for some time, looking for my wife until it was time to
return to where she was staying, as she had to catch the train to Malvern .
At lunch my mother-in-law remarked to my wife that it was a curious

isya] Recent Cases.

coincidence they should have been talking of Miss M. on their way home. I
askod if they remembered whereabouts they began speaking of her, and it
turned out that it was on the exact spot to a yard where I had met Miss M.
-Yours faithfully, (gigned) [Mr B -,

December 17th, 1897.

DEAR SIR, — I was walking home from town, and when at the Montpellier
walk I said to my daughter (Mrs. "B.") that I wondered if - had arrived
from Ceylon and where she would pass the winter. We continued talking
about her almost the whole way home. At the Christ Church crossing we
met my son-in-law (Mr. " B.") on his bike and he called out something
about - which we did not understand. On reaching home we found a
letter from this lady saying how vexed she was to miss us, as she was leaving
by next train. At lunch my son-in-law remarked how curious we should
have talked of - during the morning, and asked where we were when the
conversation began. We said, "At the Montpellier Walk," which proved
to be exactly where he had met - about half-an-hour before we returned

that w»y- (Signed) [MRS. A.]

December 17th, 1897.

DEAR SIR, — I was walking home with my mother when she asked me if
I had had any news of Miss M. and where she was, and wondered where she
was going to live. We began talking of her on the Montpellier Walk, and
continued chatting about her nearly the entire way home. At the Christ
Church crossing \ve met my husband on his bike, who shouted out something
about Miss M. , which we failed to understand. But when we arrived at the
house we found that Miss M. had called and was so sorry to miss us, as she
was leaving Cheltenham by the next train. At luncheon we were telling my
father and husband how curious it was that we were talking of Miss M. so
much and that she should be in Cheltenham, and my husband asked us where
we began to speak of her, and we told him at the Montpellier Walk, which
proved to be exactly where he had met our friend before we returned;

thatwfty- (Signed) [MRS. B.]

L. 1100. AnP"

Sir William Crookes writes on December 13th, 1897: —
"I enclose a letter from Mrs. Fisher (Arabella Buckley) which is of
interest, not so much on account of the instance of telepathy, which is slight,
and possibly a coincidence, but as coming from a lady well known for having
written good books on science and knowing how to observe."

The account of Mrs. Fisher (Associate S.P.R.) is as follows : —
Elmcroft, Newton Abbot, S. Devon, December 9th, 1897.

DEAR SIR WILLIAM CROOKES, — . . . An instance of telepathy has just
occurred, which I think, on account of its triviality, may be worth putting on.
record with names and date.

Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., isiis.

This evening my step-daughter (Mrs. Heriot) and I were sitting together
in the drawing-room, no one else being present. She was working and I was
reading to-day's Times. We had not spoken for some time. I had read
through the correspondent's article on the "Engineering Dispute" and the
leading article on the same subject.

As I finished, my eye fell on a small print paragraph telling of a gas
explosion caused by looking for an escape with a light. Without reading it I
exclaimed aloud "Oh! What idiots some people are !" Mrs. Heriot replied
instantly " Yes, gas."

So far the bare fact. Much astonished I said, " How on earth did you
know I meant gas?" "I do not know," she replied, "but as you said 'Oh !'
I saw a man looking for a gas escape with a light."

My step-daughter and I have been close friends for more than thirty
years, and have often noticed how we speak of the same things simul-
taneously. But nothing so striking as this has occurred before.
-Yours very sincerely, ARABELLA B. FISHER.

I should perhaps say that Mrs. Heriot was sitting on the opposite side of
the fire, that she had not read the paper, and had no clue as to what part I
was reading.

In reply to inquiries Mrs. Heriot writes : —

Elmcroft, Newton Abbot, S. Devon, December 17th, 1897.

DEAR SIR, — . . . Mrs. Fisher has asked me to write to you about
what occurred the other evening. I was sitting on one side of the fireplace,
working, she on the other, reading the Times. She looked up, saying, " Oh !
what fools some people are ! " As she spoke, it flashed through my mind,
as if she had read aloud, that some person had taken a light to look for an
escape of gas, and thereby caused an explosion — so I at once answered
" yes, gas."-I am, yours faithfully, RQSE MAOKAY

P. 174.

The statements in this case were obtained by Mr. Podmore, who
writes on January 4th, 1898 : —

I enclose accounts of a P. dream of Terriss' death : —

(1) By Mr. Lane, the dreamer.

(2) By Miss Haygate, the first person to whom the dream was told.

(3) By Mr. Carter Bligh, one of several to whom the dream was told at
the theatre, in the early afternoon of the 16th. Terriss was stabbed at
7.20 on the 16th.

Mr. Lane and Miss Haygate were understudies for Terriss and Miss
Millward respectively.

Miss Haygate is a connection by marriage of a friend of mine, Mr.

Ronald Hepburn. Mrs. Hepburn was dining with the D s on the

evening of the 16th, when Miss Haygate came in and told them of the
murder and of the dream which she had heard a few hours before.

FEB., 1808.] Recent Cases. 195

Hepburn told mo this the next day, and arranged a meeting for me
• Hi the 18th.

The accounts are as follow : —

1. From Mr. Frederick Lane.

Adolphi Theatre, December 20th, 1897.

In the early morning of the 16th December, 1897, 1 dreamt that I saw the
late Mr. Terriss lying in a state of delirium or unconsciousness on the stairs
leading to the dressing rooms in the Adelphi Theatre. He was surrounded
by people engaged at the theatre, amongst whom were Miss Millward and
one of the footmen who attend the curtain, both of whom I actually saw a
few hours later at the death scene. His chest was bare and clothes torn
aside. Everybody who was around him was trying to do something for his
good. This dream was in the shape of a picture. I saw it like a tableau on
which the curtain would rise and fall. I immediately after dreamt that wi;
<lid not open at the Adelphi Theatre that evening. I was in my dressing
room in the dream, but this latter part was somewhat incoherent. The next
morning on going down to the theatre for rehearsal the first member of the
Company I met was Miss Olive Haygate, to whom I mentioned this dream.
( )n arriving at the theatre I also mentioned it to several other members of
the Company including Messrs. Creagh Henry, Buxton, Carter Bligh, etc.
This dream, though it made such an impression upon me as to cause me to
relate it to my fellow artists, did not give me the idea of any coming
disaster. I may state that I have dreamt formerly of deaths of relatives, and
-other matters which have impressed me, but the dreams have never impressed
me sufficiently to make me repeat them the following morning and have
never been verified. My dream of the present occasion was the most vivid
I have ever experienced ; in fact life-like, and exactly represented the scene
*s I saw it at night. FREDERICK LANE.

Mr. Podraore appends the following note : —

January 4th, 1898.

At a meeting on the 20th December Mr. Lane gave me first a viva voce
account of his experience, and then wrote it down, as above. He explained
that he was in the neighbourhood of the theatre when Mr. Terriss was
stabbed on the evening of Thursday the 16th December, 1897, and ran to
the Charing Cross Hospital for a doctor. On his return he looked in at
the private entrance, and saw Mr. Terriss lying on the stairs as in the dream.

F. P.

2. From Miss Haygate.

Adelphi Theatre, December 18th, 1897.

On Thursday morning about twelve o'clock I went into Rule's, Maiden
Lane, and there found Mr. Lane with Mr. Wade. In the course of
conversation after Mr. Wade had left, Mr. Lane said that he had had a
curious dream the niylit before, the effects of which he still felt. It was t(,
this effect : he had seen Terriss on the stairs, inside the Maiden Lane door
(the spot where Terriss died), and that he was surrounded by a crowd ot

196 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [FEB., 1898.

people, and that he was raving, but he (Mr. Lane) couldn't exactly tell what
was the matter. I remember laughing about this, and then we went to

rehearsal" OLIVE HAYGATE.

3. From Mr. Carter Bligh.

Adelphi Theatre, W.C., January 4th, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — I must apologise for the delay in replying to your note. . . .

I have much pleasure in being able to state that Mr. Fred Lane, on the
morning of the 16th ult., at rehearsal at the Adelphi Theatre, told me
among others in a jocular and chaffing way, (not believing in it for an instant}
how he probably would be called upon to play Captain Thomas, that night,,
as he had dreamt that something serious had happened to Terriss. I forget
now, and therefore do not attempt to repeat, the exact words Mr. Lane used
as to the reason (in the dream) why Mr. Terriss would not appear that night,.
but I have a distinct recollection of him saying that he (Terriss) could not
do so, because of his having dreamt that something had happened. It was;
all passed over very lightly in the same spirit in which it was given, i.e., in
the spirit of unbelieving banter.

I presume that you are a member of the S.P.R., and that your object in
making this enquiry is to ascertain the cause of such phenomena, or find an
explanation of some kind, rational or irrational. From my recollections of
the S.P.R. (some years back) I do not think the methods employed or the-
theories preconceived by that body are calculated to give any satisfaction to
a truth-seeking mind as regards the ultimate workings of nature's law, which
sometimes psychically pictures an event (usually a high-wrought one)
apparently before its actual occurrence. This is one of the commonest of
occurrences and needs no corroboration or proof that it can happen, to those-
(like ourselves) who have come into contact with psychic phenomena of any
kind.

No doubt you have read also of the story (fully substantiated by three
people) of the pet dog of the deceased — how she jumped up from a quiet
sleep in furious anger, precisely at 7.20 p.m., the time of the murder.
. . .-Yours very sincerely, H CARTER

In reply to further inquiries, Mr. Podmore received the following
letter from Mr. S. Creagh Henry : —

5, Milborne Grove, The Boltons, S.W., January 20th.

DEAR SIR, — With reference to your letter concerning Mr. Lane's dream,.
he mentioned it to me at rehearsal during the morning of the day which
proved fatal to poor Terriss. The description he gave me was that he saw
Mr. Terriss on the staircase (upon the landing where he died) surrounded
by several people who were supporting him in what appeared to be a fit.

Something serious seemed to have happened, and no performance took
place that evening, — another fact which was verified. As far as I recollect
this was all Mr. Lane mentioned. — I remain, yours faithfully,

S. CREAGH HENRY.

No. CXLVII.-VoL. VIII. MAHCH, 1898.

JOURNAL

OF THK

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAOK

New Members and Associates 197

Annual General Meeting of Members of the Society 198

Meeting of the Council 199

General Meeting 201

Correspondence : —

The Validity of the "Spirit " Hypothesis 203

The " Spirit Hypothesis " and Mrs. Piper 205

Cause of Confusion in some "Spirit Commnicatious " .. .. .. .. .. 20ft

Complex Coincidences and Chance Coincidence 207

Balance Sheet for the Year 1897 210

The Edmund Gurney Library Fund 211

NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

DE TRAFFORD, MRS. GALFRID, 67, Cadogan-gardens, London, S.W.
DIXON, PROF. W. MACNEILE, M.A., LL.B., Litt. D., Mason College,

Birmingham.

Fawssett, Thomas, 97, Philbeach-gardens, Earl's-court, London, S.W.
Gow, WILLIAM, 184, Earl's Court-road, London, S.W.
Heath, Mrs. Cuthbert, 47, Portman-square, London, W.
HIGFORD, Miss KATHARINE, 23, Eaton-place, London, S.W.
JEVONS, F. B., Litt. D., Hatfield Hall, Durham.
LLOYD, THOS. EDWARD, J.P., Coedmore, Cardigan.
LUCAS, HENRY, "Thirlmere," Anderton Park-rd., Moseley, Birmingham.
Strachey, John St. Loe, Spectator Office, 1, Wellington-street,

Strand, W.C.
THOMSON, EDWARD JOHN, Glen Tower, Great Western-road, Glasgow.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

ARNOLD, Miss FANNIE, 323, North 17th-street, Omaha, Neb.
BROWN, MRS. H. T., Hillcrest, Winchester, Mass.

198 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1898.

CHASE, G. N. (Lieut. U.S. Army, Rtd.), Box 198, Santa Barbara, Gal.
FULLER, S. C., M.D., Insane Hospital, Westborough, Mass.
NEWTON, MRS. MARY B., 1,811, Capitol-avenue, Omaha, Neb.
NOBLE, RAYMOND G., South Windsor, Conn.
WELLS, DAVID W., M.D., 391, Boyls ton-street, Boston, Mass.
WRIGHT, MAJOR-GENERAL H. G., 1,203, N.-st., N.W., Washington, D.C.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF MEMBERS OF
THE SOCIETY.

The Annual General Meeting of Members of the Society for
Psychical Research was held at the Westminster Town Hall on
January 28th, at 3 p.m., the President, Sir William Crookes, F.R.S.,
in the chair.

The Notice convening the Meeting was read.

The President said this was the second Annual General Meeting of
Members held since the incorporation of the Society in the autumn of
1895. Of the six retiring Members of Council at the end of 1897, one,
Dr. C. Lockhart Robertson, had been removed by death. The other
five retiring members were all willing to stand for re-election, and had
allowed themselves to be nominated. One other member had also been
nominated. Notice of these nominations had been sent round to
members in accordance with the Articles of Association. These six
nominations being sufficient to fill up the vacancies in the elected
Members of the Council, and no other nominations having been made,
the President said that he had only to declare that the following six
Members were duly elected Members of the Council : — Mr. F. W. H.
Myers, Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S., Mr. Sydney C. Scott, Mr. H. Babington
Smith, C.S.I., Mr. R. Pearsall Smith, and Dr. J. Venn, F.R.S.

In reference to the present position of the Society, the President
said that the total number of names of all classes on the list of the
Society on January 1st, 1897, was 906. The elections during the year
1897 had been 73. Against these were to be set 37 resignations,
14 removals by death, and 17 names struck off the list, of persons who
had been lost sight of, or who had become merely nominal members,
thus showing the number of the Society at the commencement of the
present year to be 911. The American Branch had diminished in
numbers during last year from 420 to 414.

The President went on to say that he had before him an audited
statement of the Income and Expenditure during 1897, which would,

MAR., i«;»8.] Mating of the Cou'i»-'f. 199

as usual, be printed in the Journal. lie also had before him a state-
ment of Assets and Liabilities at the end of 1897. This showed a
considerably smaller indebtedness than usual at the end of the year ;
the printing account for all the publications during 1897 having been
fully paid. It also showed an improvement in the position of the
Society during the year of a little over £100. This statement was
made up, as in former years, without including any estimated value of
the Society's library, or of the stock of Proceedings, or of furniture.
The receipts during the year included full payment from the American
Branch for the cost of publications supplied to Members of the Branch,
and for sales in America. The President moved the adoption of the
statement of accounts, which, on being seconded and put to the meeting,
was carried unanimously.

The President invited remarks from members present, to which
there being no response, he declared the meeting closed.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

The Council met at the close of the Annual General Meeting above
reported. The President, Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., occupied the
chair. There were also present, Col. J. Hartley, Dr. R. Hodgson,
Dr. C. L. Tuckey, Dr. A. Wallace, and Messrs. F. W. H. Myers,
F. Podmore, arid Sydney C. Scott.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and signed as correct.

Report was made that the Annual General Meeting had been held,
and that Members of Council had been elected as stated above.

Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., was re-elected President of the
Society for the ensuing year.

Mr. H. Arthur Smith was re-elected as Hon. Treasurer, and Mr.
F. W. H. Myers as Hon. Secretary, and Mr. Arthur Miall as Auditor
for the ensuing year.

The following were co-opted as Members of Council for the ensuing
year : — Dr. A. W. Barrett, Dr. J. Milne Bramwell, Mr. St. George
Lane Fox, Dr. R. Hodgson, Mr. Registrar Hood, Dr. G. F. Rogers,
Dr. C. Lloyd Tuckey, and Dr. A. Wallace.

Committees were elected as follows, with power to add to their
number : —

Committee of Reference. — Professor W. F. Barrett, Sir W. Crookes,
Dr. R. Hodgson, Dr. W. Leaf, Professor O. J. Lodge, Mr. F. W. H.

200 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1898.

Myers, Lord Rayleigh, Professor H. Sidgwick, Professor J. J.
Thomson, Dr. J. Venn, and Mrs. Verrall.

Library Committee. — Dr. J. Milne Bramwell, Colonel Hartley, Mr.
R W. H. Myers, and Dr. C. Lloyd Tuckey.

Hypnotic Committee. — Dr. A. W. Barrett, Dr. J. Milne Bramwell,
Hon. E. Feilding, Mr. St. George Lane-Fox, Dr. R. Hodgson, Dr. W.
Leaf, Mr. F. Podmore, Mr. G. Albert Smith, Dr. C. Lloyd Tuckey,
Dr. A. Wallace, and Mr. E. Westlake.

House and Finance Committee. — Mr. Sydney C. Scott, Mr. H.
Arthur Smith, and Lieut. -Colonel G. L. Le M. Taylor.

The existing lists of Honorary Associates and of Corresponding
Members were confirmed for the ensuing year.

Three new Members and eight new Associates, whose names and
addresses are given above, were elected. The election of eight new
Associates of the American Branch was also recorded.

The Council recorded with regret the death of the Rev. Charles L.
Dodgson, who had been a Member of the Society almost from its
commencement.

The resignation of two Members and sixteen Associates, who for
various reasons desired to terminate their connection with the Society
at the end of 1897, was accepted.

Mrs. A. E. Hollins (late Miss E. Dall) has qualified as a Life
Associate.

The name of Mr. F. C. S. Schiller was at his request transferred
from the list of Associates to that of Members. The names of Mr.
Alexander Howell, Mrs. R. W. Nicholson (late Miss V. Portal), and
Mr. David H. Wilson were at their request transferred from the list
of Members to that of Associates.

The Council acknowledged with thanks a present to the library
from the London Spiritualist Alliance of a bound copy of Light for
1897.

The audited Statement of Accounts was referred to the House and
Finance Committee, who were requested to prepare an estimate of
income and expenditure for the current year, and present it with their
report to the next meeting of the Council.

The Council acknowledged, with their best thanks, the receipt of a
donation of £20 from Mr. Ralph Radcliffe -Whitehead, of Santa
Barbara, California, a Life Member of the Society, which he offered as
the nucleus of a fund for the special investigation of " the physical

M \u., 1898.] General Meeting. 201

side of psychical phenomena," suggesting the appointment of a
committee to report periodically on recent scientific discoveries that
may seem to throw any light on the " finer forces of matter." In
accordance with this suggestion, a committee was appointed to draw
up a report for the year 1898, consisting of Sir W. Crookes, Mr. St.
George Lane Fox, Dr. R. Hodgson, Professor O. J. Lodge, Mr. F.
Pod more, Dr. C. L. Tuckey, and Dr. A. Wallace

It was agreed that the next meeting of the Council should he held
on Friday, the llth of March, at 19, Buckingham-street, W.C., at
4.30 p.m.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 90th General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, January 28th, at 4 p.m. : the President,
SIR WILLIAM CROOKES, F.R.S., in the chair.

A paper by MR. ANDREW LANG on " Crystal Visions " was read by
Mr. F. W. H. Myers. Mr. Lang began by pointing out that the
practice of crystal-gazing in one form or another was very wide-spread.
He had found instances of it among the Maoris, the Red Indians,
Australians, etc., and the result of his anthropological survey, taken in
connection with the cases adduced by " MissX." (Proceedings, Vol. V.),
made it seem probable that so widely diffused and ancient a usage was
based on actual experience of hallucinations thus evoked. Mr. Lang
referred to several cases of " scrying" among his friends, especially that
of a young lady whom he called " Miss Angus," who developed a
power of "seeing" in a glass ball persons and places unknown to her,
but familiar to strangers among whom she was living. Such objections
as that the visions might have been " guessed," or that the histories of
the persons for whom she looked in the crystal might have been
studied beforehand, or that the descriptions were merely chance
coincidence, etc., were considered, and the author then quoted various
visions of Miss Angus in detail, with the corroborative accounts of
the persons concerned. They seemed to him to be good examples of
"thought-transference." He inclined to think that crystal visions
were more analogous to illusions hypnagogigues than to anything else
in common experience, but the crystal-gazers were always in their
normal condition when scrying.

The PRESIDENT said that it would be interesting to know precisely
where the images seen in "crystals" appeared, and of what size they
were. How could all the details described in the visions referred to,

202 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAE., 1898.

be seen in a small crystal ball ? Possibly the images were projected,
as it were, in the space in front of the ball. Another question
concerned the nature of the image, and a similar question applied to
" ghosts ; " — was it a real thing in front of one in space, or was it
the result of a nerve change acting downwards on the retina, and
thus perhaps producing a retinal image 1 Was it, in brief, caused by
an outside object, or was it a brain image ? It would hardly appear
solid, he thought, if a brain image only. He referred to methods of
testing the image for externality, such as the production of two images
by pressure on one of the eyeballs, or by looking at it through a
doubly refracting prism, the rotation of the images by turning the
prism, etc.

Miss GOODRICH FKEEU said that in her experience the " crystal
pictures " appeared to be projected outside of the crystal. One great
difficulty experienced by persons experimenting in crystal-gazing was
in focussing the eyes correctly. They should be directed to a point
about half an inch below the surface of the crystal, to avoid disturb-
ances caused by reflections, from the surface of the crystal, of the
surrounding objects. The size of the ball used was not material. She
used one the diameter of which was little more than a shilling. The
images were not actually existent in the crystal, but the crystal acted
as suggestion and stimulus on images projected from one's own brain.
She had tried all kinds of experiments on the lines suggested by the
President, with Iceland spar, optical instruments, etc., but the pictures
behaved as if real objects. Nevertheless, she could not but regard
them as subjective. Miss Goodrich Freer added that in the case of
the subject of whom Mr. Lang wrote, and whom she knew well and
had experimented with, it was interesting to know that she was not
only an accomplished crystal-gazer, but also what, for want of a better
name, we call a " Seer."

Another paper by MR. ANDREW LANG on "Oppositions of Science"
was then read by Mr. F. W. H. Myers. In this paper the author
considered various criticisms brought by Herr Edmund Parish in his
work Hallucinations and Illusions, against the views expressed by the
authors of the Report on the Census of Hallucinations (Proceedings,
Vol. X.). He dealt in some detail with the views of Herr Parish,
pointing out various inaccuracies in his statements, and concluding
that Herr Parish's arguments were invalid.

Only a brief account of Mr. Lang's papers is given here, as it
is hoped that they will appear in full in Part XXXIV. of our
Proceedings.

The meeting then adjourned.

M.\ it., 1898.] Correspondence. 203

CORRESPONDENCE.

[The Editor is not, responsible for opinions expressed by Correspondents.]

THE VALIDITY OF THE 'SPIRIT' HYPOTHESIS.

Oxford.

The spiritualist is, as it were, tho herring of the intellectual world. He
is fair game and nutritious prey for all the leviathans of the deep —
theological scientific, and philosophic ; .all are leagued against him and
ravenous to devour him ; his sole safety lies in obscurity or flight. I am
conscious, therefore, of acting in a perfectly quixotic fashion in saying a
word in defence of the loc/ical status of the 'spirit' hypothesis ; the more
so as I am not a spiritualist myself, and my philosophic opinions are quite
independent of the proof or disproof of ' spirit ' communications. But the
interests of clear thinking and fair play seem to render it desirable that
some reply should be made to Mr. Lane-Fox's self-confident attack upon
the philosophic value of the ' spirit ' hypothesis in the February number
of the Journal. Mr. Lane-Fox seems to take high philosophic and
even ethical ground in his objections to the obnoxious theory of personal
persistence, but I believe it can be shown that his argument proves little
but his own metaphysical prejudice against personality. For, of course,
to anyone who can not or will not accept the existence and significance of
personality, no evidence can be sufficient to prove its persistence, and there
is no inanity of vagueness, no extravagance of pantheistic assumption,
which he will not prefer to the simple admission that the mysterious fact we
call personality may pervade other modes of existence than ours and persist
through the change we call death.

I do not know what Mr. Lane-Fox's particular brand of pantheism is,
but I am strongly convinced that no pantheism ever yet explained anything
in particular, or failed to dissolve into vacuity the moment it was really
brought into contact with a fact. Hence the attempt to substitute pan-
theistic notions for personality is necessarily futile.

And it is also tolerably obvious that Mr. Lane-Fox's comparison of a
human spirit to a tornado is worthless. A tornado is not, so far as we know,
self-conscious, and it is the impenetrable exclusiveness of self -consciousness
which forces us to infer the existence of the self-conscious spirits of our
fellow-men. Moreover, to explain personal identity by tornadoes involves
the vicious method of explaining the higher by the lower, and ignores the
fact (well known to philosophers) that all our explanations of natural
phenomena ultimately consist only in projecting into them more or less
imperfect analogies with human nature.

Again, Mr. Lane-Fox appears to lay much stress on the dependence of
the ' spirit ' hypothesis on the old conception of substance as an unknow-
able substrate of phenomena. That theory is doubtless wrong (for it defeats
its own purpose), but so long as the language of ordinary life is used, and
no attempt is made at a precision (which is perhaps possible only for a
trained philosopher), no objection can fairly be made. And in any case so
long as the scientific theory of matter embodies the same conception, the

204 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1898.

spiritualists sin in good company. Still I should be the last to complain of
a precise use of terms, and what I really take exception to in Mr. Lane-Fox's
objection to "the permanent spiritual entity underlying our individual
existence," is that he should calmly suppose that the spiritualist hypothesis
necessarily depends on an obsolete theory of substance. Let him adopt
Lotze's or James's theory of substance and personal identity and take it that
the self (or ego or ' spirit ') is nothing beyond the self-consciousness
and continuity of the psychic processes, and he will find that the 'spirit'
hypothesis works even better than before.

In his final innuendo also, in which he seeks to create a prejudice by
representing individual existence as " a baneful influence," there is little
cause for alarm. It is doubtless true that personality is a power for evil as
well as for good ; but, then, what is the alternative to it 1 If you take away
personality, you take away evil and good altogether, and deprive the world
of every element of value. A ' thing ' or a ' tornado ' cannot be evil,
because it cannot be good nor feel anything to be good.

I come next to the vulgar charge of " crude materialism " brought against
the ' spirit ' hypothesis. That is doubtless true as against many spiritualists
as it is against many scientists. We cannot, alas, expect ordinary men to
move with the safety that is born of familiarity amid the subtleties of
metaphysics. But to accuse the ' spirit ' hypothesis (as to accuse science as
such) of crude materialism is a very different matter. In fact it would be far
truer to retort the charge of crude materialism upon many of the critics of
spiritualism, and it has often been a marvel to me as I read their
astoundingly short-sighted arguments that they should never have availed
themselves even of the slight tincture of idealism which would have removed
the obstruction of their imagination and enabled them to appreciate the
suggestiveness in the theories of the spiritualists.

For surely, once we are awakened to the possibilities of idealism, by far
the greater part of the spiritualist imagery about the future life becomes
perfectly intelligible. The world here and now can no longer be regarded as
a place or thing which has an absolute fexistence incompatible with that of
other worlds. The phenomenal world must be conceived as a state of
consciousness, and the succession of conscious states may take us into a
succession of worlds. Have these critics of spiritualism never reflected that
every night, if they dream, they are transported into another world ? And
if A's action affects B's dream, is this not at the time for B an ultra-mundane
influence ? Perhaps I may stimulate reflection on these topics by adding a
few paradoxes on the subject of ' death.'

No man has ever yet perished without annihilating also the world in
which he lived.

No man has ever yet seen another die ; but if he had, he would have
witnessed his own annihilation.

HdvTa>v xpr)p.a.Ta>v pfrpov civdpvoTTOs, ra>v jj.fi1 ov TU>V u>s etrri, rwv 8 ov/c ov TCOV

<B£ OVK fCTTlV-

The world is the greatest of all conventions ; yet all are unconventional
enough to leave it.

.., I«!>K.J Correspondence. 205

To die is to cut off our communication*! with our friends ; but do they cut
us MI \vi- tliom, or both, or neither?

If Mr. Lane-Fox has any trouble with these, he should read Alice Tlirongh
the Looking (linns and ponder on the Red King's game !

Philosophically, then, the spiritualist hypothesis is quite thinkable and
(•.insistent with what we know of the nature and procedure of this world,
it cannot be rejected a priori. On the question whether the evidence
i s sufficient to prove it de facto, I do not presume to offer an opinion ; but I
can see no reason why it should not prove identity by the same methods as
we now uso in our terrestrial affairs. If A gives me information I have
reason to believe B alone knew, I infer that he got it from B ; and if A
gives me an elaborate description of B, which turns out to be right, it is
more probable that he has seen B than that he compiled his account with
t he help of the Devil or the Absolute. And the fact that A happens to be a
' medium ' and B to be ' dead ' does not, as far as I can see, alter the canons
of criticism applicable to the case. The fact therefore that all these super-
n ormal phenomena (supposing their occurrence to be proved) tend so
strongly towards a personal form, that they are interested in persons and
give information about persons, primd facie tells in favour of the simplest
view, nz., that they are due to what they claim to be due to — persons in
the same sense in which I infer Mr. Lane-Fox to be a person. Of course
our first assumption may be quite wrong ; the matter may be very different
and far more complicated. But as a working hypothesis — supposing the facts
to be as reported — there seems to be ample ground for speaking of 'spirits.'

And this seems to be the more appropriate if we gratefully recognize the
eatjueness of the term 'spirits.' Mr. Lane-Fox complains of it because it
" conveys very little meaning at all " (though I am at a loss to reconcile this
statement with the amount of mistaken meaning he subsequently discovers
to be connoted by the term), but in reality this would seem to be an
advantage. For nothing can be more fatal in-beginning the exploration of a
novel study than to contract the range of one's vision by the adoption of too
definite and rigid a terminology. Until, then, a better phrase has been
suggested, I should like to see the term 4 spirit ' used in as purely
descriptive a sense as possible, and without prejudice to anything that might
be discovered about it. It seems to me to beg far fewer questions and to
describe far more of the apparent facts than any alternative I have ever
heard of, whether 'angels,' 'demons,' 'brain waves,' ' odic forces,'
' Mahatmas,' etc. And even if for scientific or metaphysical reasons we
should become unwilling to admit it into a theory of ultimate existence, it
would probably continue to be a useful term for classificatory purposes, just
as in biology the discovery of evolution has not superseded the discrimi-
nation of species as a methodological convenience.

F. C. S. SCHILLER.

THE "SPIRIT HYPOTHESIS" AND MRS. PIPER.

SIR, — As a Spiritualist perhaps I may be permitted to correct Mr. Lane-
JFox's definition of the same as a person who has " evolved for himself a

206 Journal of Society for Psychical Research- [MAR., 1898.

theory of the other life which every true believer must accept." Mr. Lane-
Fox has, of course, not wilfully misrepresented us ! He has spoken accord-
ing to his knowledge and betrayed its limitations. As a Buddhist, Mr.
Lane-Fox probably has a belief in some sort of existence for the individual
after the dissolution of the physical body, and as he quarrels with our
conception of a " spiritual body," we must conclude him to be in possession
of information which will upset that theory. I do not say "our" theory,
because Spiritualists have not evolved one of their own, but have simply
accepted pro tern, certain statements made by the communicating intelli-
gences. Directly Mr. Lane-Fox can suggest to us a better working
hypothesis (one that fits our facts), we shall be delighte d to give it a fair
trial, being anxious for truth at all costs. A " lump of spirit " is a curious
contradiction in terms, and one not in vogue among Spiritualists, who have
adopted their title as expressing a belief in the spiritual nature of man,
and the possibility of communicating with him after his emancipation from
the flesh. Perhaps Mr. Lane-Fox will kindly bear this in mind the next
time he seeks to describe us, as he cannot again be excused on the ground of
ignorance. The tornado illustration scarcely serves as a digestive, and it is
at least likely that the account Mrs. Piper's intelligences have given of
themselves is as accurate as the purely speculative opinions of a gentleman
who has too strong a bias towards one particular set of ideas to be able to
appreciate spiritualistic phenomena at their true value. Mr. Lane-Fox's
concluding observation that the " conception of a permanent spirit entity
underlying our individual existence is worse than useless ; is a pernicious
delusion, having a baneful influence in this world, and responsible for much
of the egotism, greed, and malignity with which our present lives are
afflicted," will surely astonish most people, while it assures Spiritualists
that they might very easily " go further and fare worse ! "

E. BROWNE.

CAUSE OF CONFUSION IN SOME "SPIRIT COMMUNICATIONS."

DEAR SIR, — On the assumption that the spiritistic hypothesis is the true
one by which to explain the origin of the trance utterances of Mrs. Piper
and automatic communications, the following suggestion may be worth con-
sidering as a possible explanation of the confusion which characterises those
messages which purport to come from an individual whose death has been
preceded by long illness or the weakness of old age .

In spiritualist writings, such as Mrs. De Morgan's book "From Matter
to Spirit," and Sarah Underwood's " Automatic Writings," it is stated that
when the spirit leaves the earthly body it takes with it a fine substance,
which is akin to the physical body and through which the spirit can still act
upon matter and communicate with those in the flesh ; it is also stated that
this fine substance is deciduous and in a more advanced stage of the spirit's
progress is altogether put off.

In an extract from the work of a German spiritualist, H. Werner, and in
one from "The Seeress of Prevorst " this substance is called " nerve spirit"
(see "From Matter to Spirit," pp. 132-137). In Sarah Underwood's

... IMS.] Correspondence. 207

matic Writings " another word is used ; in reply to a question relating
to the conditions necessary for communicating, the answer is : " Sensory
ducts are born with mortals which are here useless, and at rebirth these
must be eliminated " ; and on another occasion she was told that "all sense
perception will slowly die out " of the spirit life.

If this is a correct presentment of the facts then we have a clue to the
confusion which is felt in communicating by those whose physical body had
undergone long weakness or disease. For in all reasonable probability the
substance so closely allied to it would be debilitated also, and thus whilst the
spirit itself is intact the medium by which it operates to earth is probably
rendered inefficient. I hope that those who have had experience in the se
communications will give their opinions on the tentative explanation, eith er
to corroborate it or to show its invalidity. — I am, yours faithfully,

HELEN DALLAS.

COMPLEX COINCIDENCES AND CHANCE COINCIDENCE.

SIR, — Mr. Goodhart in his letter to the February Jour nil has raised an
interesting question as to how far a " complex coincidence " is more valuable
evidentially than a simple one ; if, e.q., A. at the time of B.'s death has ;i
waking vision of B. and of some unusual circumstances connected with the
death that have actually occurred ; is it less easy, as Mr. Goodhart main-
tains, to put the coincidence down to chance than if A. merely saw an
apparition of B. ? If we were sure that the report of the incident was
correct, we should, of course, all answer with Mr. Goodhart in the
affirmative. But I think there are generally two weak points in evidence of
this kind. One is that well-authenticated "complex coincidences" seem
to be rare compared with simple ones, — judging at least, from the evidence
received by the S.P.R., — and their rarity tends, since no one case can be
said to rest on absolutely irreproachable evidence, to depreciate somewhat
the value of the whole class. The second difficulty to my mind is that the
additional circumstances of the vision are much more likely to be inaccurately
reported than the vision itself.

One more point. The complex coincidence is apt to involve a "vision"
rather than a "hallucination," — that is, an imaginary scene which displaces
in the percipient's consciousness his real surroundings, rather than a
hallucinatory impression, e.g., of a human figure, which mixes with and
forms part of his perception of his surroundings. Such visions may be
hardly distinguishable from dreams, and the weakness of dreams as evidence
of anything supernormal is generally admitted. Veridical dreams, as
reported, often afford instances of complex coincidences, but they are apt to
contain also what are sometimes called symbolic, but what I should prefer
to call incorrect details, which detract from the value of the correct ones.
And wo must further allow for the tendency to remember the correct rather
than the incorrect details.

These considerations of course emphasise still further the need insisted
on by Mr. Goodhart of improving our evidence, and especially of recording
all experiences fully before confirmation. I am inclined to think with him

208 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1898.

that at the present stage we cannot go further than we have done in
applying the theory of probability to cases. Any calculation of chances
depends, of course, on the assumption that the incidents treated of are
correctly reported, which is a question of evidence. To investigate the
evidence is the first and most important step in the enquiry, and has always
been treated as such by the investigators who have attempted to test the
hypothesis of chance coincidence. But I may point out that, after rejecting
all cases that seemed insufficiently evidenced, their calculations only assume
the accuracy of a certain proportion of the remaining reports, so that, as
remarked in the Report on the Census of Hallucinations, p. 248, "the
evidence must break down in a wholesale way in order to destroy our
argument." Though, however, I agree that we cannot go further in using
this method at present, I think we should not ignore all that has been done
by the use of it in the past.

Of the points in debate between Dr. Hebert and myself, I am afraid
that readers of the Journal must be already weary. I will not therefore
spend time in repudiating a number of views on various subjects which
Dr. Hebert — no doubt through obscurities of expression in my former letter
— erroneously attributes to me. But in some matters 1 should like to make
my own position clearer. Taking them in the order used by Dr. Hebert : —

(1). My remark that cases appearing in the Journal were not necessarily to
be regarded as evidence of anything supernormal was, as he surmises, not
intended as a warning for him, but, on the contrary, as an endorsement of
his views.

(2) and (3). I did not object to his theory that cases suggestive of
telepathy could be explained by chance coincidence because the theory was
not new. No doubt, if old explanations fit the facts, it is unnecessary to seek
for new ones. My contention is that the S.P.R. has published a great mass
of evidence and reasoning which tend to show that in this particular case
the old explanation does not hold. I supposed that Dr. Hebert must be
familiar with this evidence, and therefore I did not think it necessary to do
more than refer to the works in which it is to be found. But as his last
letter leads me to think that my supposition must have been mistaken, I
may quote a part of the last paragraph of the Report on the Census of
Hallucinations (see Proceedings of the S.P.R. , Vol. X., p. 394.) "The
most important part of our work lies in the corroboration, on a much wider
basis, of the conclusion already drawn by Mr. Gurney from his Census in
1885. Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connection exists
which is not due to chance alone. This we hold as a proved fact." Here, of
course, is represented merely the personal opinion of those who were
responsible for the drawing up of the Report ; and it is naturally impossible
to give within the compass of a letter to the Journal the evidence and
reasoning which occupy some 400 pages of the Proceedings. But, since the
book is accessible to all the world, I cannot help feeling that it would be
more profitable to point out whatever flaws exist in its method of reasoning
than to raise again ab initio the question which the writers after several years
of research have answered.

is.] Correspondence. 209

(4) With Dr. Hebert's general principle of explaining occurrences by
known l.-iws before having recourse to hypothetical ones, we should all, of
course, Hgnhi agree. But he does not suggest any " natural grounds " which
have escaped the notice of those who advocate the theory of telepathy. The
question, for instance, whether anxiety could have caused the apparently
veridical hallucinatory impressions which the writers brought forward as
evidence of telepathy, was very fully dealt with in the Report on the Census
of Htdhicinatioim, as it had previously been in Phantasms of the Living, and
was answered in both cases in the negative .

Turning to the more difficult question of what we mean by " cause and
effect," it does not seem to me that Dr. Hebert has demonstrated the
inaccuracy of the common definition which I used, that by cause and effect
we mean that two events have occurred so often together that we are led to
believe them to be causally connected. I should indeed claim as good
instances of this definition the two cases which he gives to show its
inadequacy. The second of these he states as follows : — " One more
example where the frequency principle although present does not lead to
any inference. Cocks crow before sunrise, and . . . these two events
have happened innumerable times together, and yet I have never heard any
one suggest that cock crowing contributed anything in causing the sun to
rise." Nor have I, but I should not be at all surprised to hear some one
suggest that the sunrise contributed something towards causing cocks to
crow.

Dr. Hebert's first case is the discovery by Leverrier (and Adams) of the
planet Neptune, in which, he says, "the element of frequency could have
had nothing to do with the idea of cause and effect," since Neptune had
never been observed before its existence was conjectured, and in such cases,
"it can only be through the knowledge of the mode of action of a cause
that such inference can be drawn."

Now, it seems to me probable that Dr. Hebert and I really agree in the
main in our conceptions of what we mean by cause and effect and that our
apparent discrepancy comes from our each representing a different aspect of
the same idea. Dr. Hebert is, I think, considering a general principle,
while I was speaking of a way of regarding particular cases. Most people,
I suppose, hold the general principle of causation, — that is, they hold that
no event is isolated, but depends on something preceding it and leads on to
something following. But when we come to consider in any particular case
what constitutes the proof that one event is the cause of another, we
depend, it seems to me, exclusively on the frequency with which the events
have been observed to coincide with one another — that is, on experience.
Having observed a number of coincidences and holding the general principle
of causation, we make the hypothesis that one event is the cause of
the other ; and the hypothesis having been tested by varying the con-
ditions under which the so-called "effects" may be observed, — that is,
by trying what variety of precedent events coincide with the "effects," —

(Continued OH p. 21.'.)

210 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1898.

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212 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAR., 1898..

(Continued from p. 209.)

becomes formulated as a law. We suppose that the law holds in all similar
cases, because we assume the uniformity of nature, — an assumption which
cannot possibly be derived from anything but experience. We then deduce
particular inferences from the law, as was done in the discovery of Neptune ;
and the inferences thus depend — not immediately, but ultimately — on
experience, or the observation of coincidences.

Further, in any particular case, the coincidences, if not directly observed,
are known or assumed. Neptune had existed long before it was observed,
and the whole of its existence had probably coincided with the perturbation*
of Uranus ; — this, at least, was certainly assumed when its influence on
Uranus was inferred.

Dr. Hebert speaks of the necessity of understanding the mode of action
of a cause. To me it seems that all we can do towards understanding it
is to find that more than two events are in experience constantly linked
together. The greater the number of events, the greater is the sense of
intellectual satisfaction that we associate with the knowledge of their
linkage, and with the practical advantage that when we see the first, we are
able to predict — again assuming the uniformity of nature — that the rest will
follow. What Dr. Hebert says of the benefit of being able to draw such
inferences is, of course, very true. Only it appears to me that they rest for
their validity ultimately on experience and observation, rather than on ' ' the
knowledge of the mode of action of a cause."

Finally, Dr. Hebert objects to my saying that the question whether
chance coincidence will account for incidents suggestive of telepathy is not
one that can be decided by an appeal to common sense ; he says we can ill
afford to dispense with common sense. It never occurred to me that my
words could be taken to mean that I recommended dispensing with it, nor
do I think that they admit of that interpretation. If the statement were
made that the area of a circle could not be determined by common sense, it
would be understood to mean that common sense alone, without a knowledge
of the appropriate mathematical method, would be inadequate to the task, —
not that common sense should be thrown to the winds in carrying it out.
Not only would common sense be indispensable in applying the mathematical
method, but it would no doubt lead any one who wished to determine the
area of a circle to use a recognised and tested method of doing so — unless
he had previously discovered that the method was fallacious — instead of
ignoring the results already obtained and trying to solve the problem over
again from the beginning.

Similarly it seems to me that the most reasonable way of testing whether
so-called telepathy can be attributed to chance coincidence is to apply the
theory of probability to a large number of cases, — not of the type that
Dr. Hebert has been criticising, but of types that cannot be accounted for
on any of the "natural grounds" he has described. Of such types,
numerous examples are, in my view, to be found in the publications of the
S.P.R. — I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

ALICE JOHNSON.

No. CXLVIII.— VOL. VIII. AIMUL, iww.

JOURNAL

OF Tin:

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Associates 213

Meeting of the Council 213

General Meeting 214

Oomspondence : —

Crystal-Gazing 222

The "Spirit" Hypothesis 224

Report of Experiments in Thought-Transference 226

Cure of Warts by Suggestion 226

Case.. 227

NEW ASSOCIATES.

BATHE, MBS. EFFIE, 72, King's-road, Camden Town, London, N.W.
BREWSTER, BERTRAM, 5, Lansdowne-place, London, W.C.
BRODRICK, MRS. ALAN, 31, Greenheys-road, Liverpool.
PICKERING, HAROLD J., L.D.S. Eng., 10, Museum-street, York.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

JACKSON, JOHN L., 1,113, East 3rd-street, Fort Worth, Texas.

VAIL, REV. W. S., Atlanta, Ga.

WRIGHT, COLONEL J. P., 500, N. Commercial-street, St. Louis, Mo.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

The Council met at the Rooms of the -Society, 19, Buckingham
Street, W.C., on March llth. Mr. F. Podmore was voted to the chair.
There were also present, Sir Augustus K. Stephenson, Dr. R. Hodgson,
Dr. A. Wallace, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, and Mr. H. Arthur Smith.

The minutes of last meeting were read and signed as correct.

Four new Associates, whose names and addresses are given above,
were elected. The election of three new Associates of the American
Branch was also recorded.

214 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1898.

The Council recorded with regret the death of Miss Frances E.
Willard, the well-known Temperance Reformer, who was an Associate
of the Society.

In accordance with their request the names of Mr. Donald
Murray and Dr. W. Wynn Westcott were ti'ansferred from the list
of Associates to that of Members ; and the name of Mr. J. T. Dodge,
of the American Branch, was transferred from the list of Members to
that of Associates.

Several presents to the Library were reported, for which a vote of
thanks was accorded to the donors.

The House and Finance Committee presented a Report to which
was appended an estimate of Receipts and Expenditure for the current
year. The Report was adopted.

The confirmation of the existing lists of Corresponding Members
and of Honorary Associates was agreed to, with the addition of the
name of Professor F. W. Haslam, of Canterbury College, Christchurch,
New Zealand, as an Honorary Associate.

It was agreed that the next meeting of the Council should be on
Friday, April 22nd, at the Westminster Town Hall, at 3 p.m., previous
to the General Meeting at 4 o'clock on that day.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 91st General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, March llth, at 8.30 p.m.; PROFESSOR
HENRY SIDGWICK in the chair.

MR. FRANK PODMORE opened the discussion on " The Trance
Phenomena manifested through Mrs. Piper."

Mr. Podmore prefaced his remarks by stating that he did not
propose to follow Dr. Hodgson in his speculations as to the ultimate
significance of Mrs. Piper's trance-utterances. No reflection, however,
was intended on the legitimacy of those speculations. There was,
however, a prior question to be asked ; a question which Dr. Hodgson
had, indeed, answered to his own satisfaction, — whether, namely,
the results indicated supernormal faculty of any kind, or whether they
might be attributed entirely to fraud. In considering this question,
it was important to remember that Mrs. Piper was not an isolated
phenomenon ; but a member of a large class — clairvoyant mediums —
which had been under observation for more than a century. The

Am., IH'.iS.] Gent-rut M<, •!',,,, j. 215

chief reasons why Mrs. Piper's revelations were thought more worthy
of consideration than those of any of her predecessors were: the
general high level of success ; the fulness of the record ; and the
watchful supervision exercised over her for some years past.

The abundance of the material and the fulness of the record
justified us practically in leaving altogether out of account two sources
<>f error which detracted from the value of all previous accounts of
the kind. It was tolerably clear that Mrs. Piper's success could not, to
any serious extent, be attributed to misrepresentation and exaggeration
as to what was actually said at the sitting ; nor to information
extracted by "fishing "from the sitters themselves. Such "fishing,"
indeed, as Dr. Leaf amongst others had pointed out, might reasonably
have been suspected to operate in the sittings given in this country
nine years ago ; but it was clearly inadequate now to account for even
u small proportion of the success attained. Our choice, therefore, was
clearly defined between deliberate and systematic fraud on the one
hand, and supernormal faculty on the other.

As regards fraud, it was pointed out at previous meetings that
Mrs. Piper had been paid in recent years lOdols. a sitting; her total
receipts from this source probably averaged during the last five years
not more than £200 a year. The mere fact that Mrs. Piper was paid
in no way affected the precautions taken. Those precautions were not
increased because she was paid ; nor would they have been relaxed if
.she had given her services for nothing. The position of the Society
in such investigations had always been that, while no dishonesty was
necessarily imputed to the medium, every possible precaution should
be taken on the assumption of dishonesty. But the fact that Mrs.
Piper received payment at the rate of about £'200 was of some impor-
tance, because fraud of the kind here supposed, — the employment of
private inquiry agents, — would have necessarily involved considerable
expenditure.

Before considering in detail the possibilities of this kind of fraud,
there were three preliminary arguments against dishonesty to be
stated : (1) that Mrs. Piper produced on nearly all those who came in
contact with her, — even those who were predisposed to believe her an
impostor, — the impression of transparent honesty; (2) by an almost
universal consensus of opinion her trance was a genuine one, and the
association of preconcerted fraud of the kind with a genuine trance-
condition had never yet, the speaker thought, been demonstrated ;
(3) in all the years during which she had been under the close observa-
tion of Professor W. James, Dr. Hodgson, Dr. Leaf, Professor Lodge,
Mr. Myers, and other competent persons — though she had been

2L6 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1898.

shadowed by detectives, her boxes searched, her going out and coming
in closely watched — during all these ten or twelve years not the
slightest circumstance had come to light reflecting in any way on her
honesty, there had not been so much as the rumour of an exposure.
How much weight should be attached to these three considerations,
Mr. Podmore was unable to say, but they clearly had some bearing
upon the question.

Mr. Podmore then read the records of a small group of sittings, —
those given to six Professors at Harvard, — reported on pp. 524-6,
528-9, and 534-5 of Appendix III. The group was by far below the
average as regards success ; it was selected as being a group composed
of well-known men, whose names would carry weight, and who were
not predisposed in the medium's favour.

The hypothesis that the information given at the sittings had been
worked up beforehand by means of private and systematic inquiries
was then considered in detail. The initial difficulty in such hypothesis.
was that it was the rule to introduce sitters by assumed names. We
had to suppose first, then, that Mrs. Piper was able to ascertain
beforehand who were coming, and the exact date of their sittings.
The arrangement of sittings (except for those conducted by Professor
James and Dr. Thaw, where the same precautions were observed) were
made by letter or verbally by Dr. Hodgson. The correspondence and
diary of engagements were kept in a locked desk at Dr. Hodgson's
office. No doubt if Dr. Hodgson's assistant or shorthand-writers (of
whom three were employed at different times during the period in
question) had been bribed, the information could have been obtained.
But it would not have helped much ; tho notice was sometimes only a
few days ; the sittings were sometimes changed ; and in at least one
case (p. 527) the sitting was fixed at two or three days' notice only.
Moreover, the sitters came from all parts of the United States, and in
one or two instances from abroad.

That Mrs. Piper should have worked up the dossiers of all the
sitters some time before was practically impossible. ISo doubt it was
permissible to assume a freemasonry amongst professional mediums,
and that any information obtained by one of the fraternity would be at
the disposal of all. But a considerable proportion of Mrs. Piper's
sitters were not even numbered amongst the 500 odd Members and
Associates of the A.B.S.P.R. ; and very few had ever been to a
professional medium before. It seemed clear, then, that in most cases
Mrs. Piper's own agents must have obtained the information, and must
have obtained it in the short interval between the first letter to Dr.
Hodgson and the date of the sitting.

AI-K., 1898.) General Meeting. 217

Suppose then, the speaker said, that Mrs. Piper's agent, armed
with the name and address, had gone on the quest -of information
about an intending sitter. He would find no difficulty in ascertaining
Mii-li hare external facts as the locality of the house, nature of business,
social standing, etc. In the role of a book-canvasser, say, he could have
obtained entrance to the house, would thus be competent to furnish
accurate descriptions of the living rooms and the servants' quarters; by
chatting with a sympathetic nursemaid he could have learnt more per-
sonal details — names, ages, appearances, dispositions, etc., of children,
in-ar relatives, or intimate friends of the house; and recent accidents,
illness, or death amongst them. By the more hazardous process of
bribing servants to read letters and open desks, etc., he could in some
cases, no doubt, have obtained more intimate details of family
troubles, distant friends, relatives dead years ago. But it is clear that
the further he pushed his inquiries by such methods — even did time
permit — the greater the risk (on the average of cases, the certainty)
of detection ; moreover such proceedings would have been costly, and
the results very uncertain.

Turning to the other side of the question, the speaker pointed out
that the information given at the sittings in no way corresponded to
the supposition here made. The mere external details of house, living
rooms, etc., were hardly ever given at a sitting. Mrs. Piper's trance
information was almost exclusively concerned with personal matters ;
and largely with the personal affairs of the dead ; there was much
intimate matter about the living friends, or the recently dead ; much
also about long past family histories, far distant friends, and those
dead long ago. By a fortunate chance the hypothetical inquiry
agent might have gained information in a few cases on such matters,
but it seemed incredible that he should have been able to do
so again and again with such conspicuous success. Nor did the
character of the failures suggest the reading out of dossiers of this
kind. There were, indeed, plenty of irrelevancies and incoherences,
but not such as to suggest mistakes of identity or misapplication of
dossiers.

In conclusion, the speaker suggested that at the present stage
of the investigation the charge of credulity rested with those
who, without consideration and without inquiry, could lightly attri-
bute the whole results to imposture. For himself he found it
almost as easy to believe that Dr. Hodgson had himself engineered
the whole fraud.

DR. WYLD, after referring to Mr. Podmore as a typical sceptic, said
that mere telepathy was a poor result to show for fifteen years' work.

218 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1898.

It was a small outcome of so much expenditure of labour and money
by the Society, if the best conclusion they could come to was that
Mrs. Piper was not a fraud. The Society should be called Psychical
Detectives, not Researchers. The assumption by sitters that a medium
was fraudulent often made him so. Dr Wyld made some further
remarks about the " finer vibrations " possibly involved in clair-
voyance, etc., and proceeded to predict that the prominent members
of the Society would eventually be forced to believe in "slate-writing,"
in " materialisation," and finally in " Husk's ring."

The CHAIRMAN said that he had been reluctant to interrupt the
flow of Dr. Wyld's reminiscences and predictions ; but he would ven-
ture to express the hope that subsequent speakers would keep some-
what nearer the subject under discussion. With regard to this, he
pointed out that Dr. Hodgson had directed his argument in the
Proceedings particularly to the question whether the phenomena
manifested through Mrs. Piper's trance indicated extra-human intelli-
gence. Mr. Podmore had laid before them the possibilities that could
be supposed on the hypothesis of fraud, and this had also been some-
what fully dealt with in previous reports ; he would suggest therefore
that this aspect of the case had, perhaps, been considered sufficiently,
and that attention might be now turned to the question, on the
supposition that the phenomena were of some supernormal character,
whether they were explicable by telepathy from the living, or had any
so-called " spiritistic " origin.

Another speaker remarked that in his experience with fraud on
the part of the subliminal consciousness, it always seemed to be easily
discoverable. Where the subliminal consciousness reproduced informa-
tion which it had attained by normal ways from the persons present
for example, these ways seemed to be always very obvious, and the
deception was very easily seen through.

MR. LANK Fox said that it must be remembered that Mrs. Piper,
like everybody else, had normal means of getting information, and
that the knowledge obtained normally may often be mixed up with
knowledge supernormally obtained. We could not, indeed, make a
hard and fast line between normal and supernormal. Similarly, when
we came to deal with the phenomena that seemed unquestionably to
be supernormal, we could not say, for instance, that they were due
only to Telepathy, or only to Clairvoyance, or only to Spirits. Such
phrases might be only expressive of different aspects. The term
" spirits " he thought was rather incongruous, and, as generally
employed, seemed to involve something that could move about from one
part of space to another, and that was at the same time permanent.

APB., 1898.] General Meetituj.

.Many of those who spoke of "spirits" seemed to believe that tin-
individual consciousness was a separate entity, apart from and indepen-
dent of the experiences with which the consciousness is associated,
\\liich indicated a sad confusion of thought.

MR. NEATE said that the important question was whether the
phenomena could be accounted for by telepathy from the living. He
had not yet had time to read the Report, and he inquired whether
there was any specific information given that was clearly beyond the
knowledge of the sitters.

Another speaker suggested that it would be interesting to know
what views were held on the subject by the Members of the Council
of the Society.

MR. MYERS said that he, as one Member of the Council, regarded
the hypothesis of fraud as absolutely inadequate. He spoke of Mrs.
Piper's sittings in England and the care taken about the introduction
of sitters as strangers, and said that he had been allowed to read all
Mrs. Piper's letters, that her whole day was under observation, and
that he was perfectly satisfied that she made no attempt to obtain
knowledge of sitters by any normal means. Further, even if she had
the services of confederates, and bribed servants, etc., to give her
information, only a small portion of her phenomena could be accounted
for in this way. Some of the sitters, for instance, were casual visitors
to Cambridge, or persons not known to his own servants, and brought
straight into Mrs. Piper's presence. No previous inquiries could have
obtained the information which was given. As to the theory to be
applied, he said that there was one special line of argument which
had been suggested in Dr. Hodgson's report that called for special
consideration, and it seemed to him to be a strong one. This argu-
ment was that the distribution of successes and failures at the sittings
was concordant with the view that the communications emanated from
the " spirits of the dead," rather than with the view that they were
due to the minds of the living.

PROFESSOR SIDGWICK said that he rose in response to the wish that
had been expressed to learn the opinions of Members of the Council ;
although, as he had not yet been able to give much time to the
study of Part XXXIII., he wished his conclusions to be regarded as
provisional. Dr. Hodgson's able and careful report marked, In-
thought, a crisis in the history of our investigations. The general
course of those investigations had tended to produce in his own mind,
and he believed in Dr. Hodgson's also, two main conclusions: — (1) a
positive conclusion in favour of telepathy ; (2) a negative conclusion
as regards the " physical phenomena" attributed to "spirits," — at any

220 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. Am., 1898.

rate the " physical phenomena " of professional mediums, who one
after another had been detected in fraud. He thought, however, that
it would be unfair to extend this negative conclusion to the "intellec-
tual " phenomena exhibited by Mrs. Piper. The important question
concerning these, in his view, was as to the nature and source of the
supernormal knowledge which in some cases the medium tmdoubtedly
seemed to possess. Previous reports on Mrs. Piper's phenomena had
led him to think that they were for the most part easily explicable by
thought-transference ; but Dr. Hodgson had now expressed himself as
favouring the hypothesis of " spirits." He (Professor Sidgwick) was
willing to admit that, —granting the phenomena in question to be
supernormal, — some of the evidence produced was of a kind which, if
much increased in quantity, — so as to be capable (as Dr. Hodgson had
suggested) of statistical treatment, — and obtained under adequately
varied conditions, would certainly point to the adoption of some form
of " spiritism" as a working hypothesis. But in the present condition
of the evidence, he could not say more than that a prima facie case
had been established for further investigation, keeping this hypothesis
in view. It was not merely that the evidence from Mrs. Piper alone
formed too narrow a basis for so large an assumption, and that we
must have other similar cases, — but that there were certain deficiencies
which Dr. Hodgson seemed to him to have overlooked or treated too
lightly. It must be remembered that our previous experiences of Mrs.
Piper, while they had given no ground for regarding her1 as fraudulent
in her normal state, had led us to take an unfavourable view of the
moral tone of her secondary personality. As Dr. Leaf had said in
his report in 1890, we found " Phinuit " continually attempting to
deceive, " fishing " to extract information from the sitters, ready with
ambiguities or subterfuges to conceal his ignorance. And the present
Report did not seem to show any material change in Phinuit's morale.
He found the same preference of Christian names for surnames, the
same generosity in giving the sitter a choice of various names, the
same readiness to accept suggestions, and to modify his statements
accordingly. And he thought that the new " communicator," G. P.,
showed somewhat of the same characteristics ; he resembled Phinuit in
desiring to appear to know more than he does know ; for instance, in
his discourses on philosophy, it was sometimes apparent that he had
not even an elementary grasp of the subject he was professing to
discuss intelligently. Professor Sidgwick referred to two or three
passages from the accounts of sittings in illustration.

DR. HODGSON said that there was not much demanding a special
reply from him. He reminded the members that many of the

APR,, IMS.] General Meeting. 221

sittings were not arranged for by himself at all, and that in the case
of sittings arranged for in New York, Mr. Podmore's supposition of
confederacy would have to be extended far beyond his own assistants
in Boston, if knowledge of the names of sitters was to be obtained.
A i id even after the supposition of confederacy had been pushed to the
furthest possible limits, including confederates in other parts of the
\\orld, there was a large amount of private information, including
answers to specific test questions, etc., given at the sittings, which
could not, he thought, be accounted for by any process of working up
knowledge beforehand by normal means. Mr. Podmore's view was,
perhaps, different from what many of the members had expected,
since it was clear that Mr. Podmore was quite satisfied that the
hypothesis of fraud was inadequate, and his speech would remind
them of the prophet of old who " came to curse but remained to
bless." Dr. Hodgson agreed with what Professor Sidgwick had said
on several points, especially concerning the frauds of professional
mediums for " physical phenomena." Concerning Phinuit's weak-
nesses, various " communicators " through Mrs'. Pipsr's trance had
themselves referred to these, and the contrast between them arid
Phinuit he thought furnished an additional argument in favour of
their independent existence. Concerning the statements by G. P., he
pointed out that the conditions of communication must be kept before
the mind, and that if Professor Sidgwick were compelled to discourse
philosophy through Mrs. Piper's organism, the result would be a very
different thing from his lectures at Cambridge. Concerning Mr. Lane
Fox's remarks about " spirits," he said that there were two aspects of
the case which must be discriminated. We might regard a " spirit "
as manifesting in one portion of the space of the physical world, and
again as manifesting elsewhere in that world, without supposing that
the "spirit" as such had a spatial existence or passed through space
from one spot to another. On the other hand, it might be supposed
that the " spirit " had some such relation to an etherial body as the
ordinary human consciousness had to its fleshly organism ; and that
etherial body might be conceived as passing through space in the same
sense that the fleshly organism passed through space. The first view
did not necessarily involve the second, but both views might be
maintained. Dr. Hodgson, in answer to the question put by Mr.
Neate, referred to some instances quoted in his Report, and gave
additional illustrations to show that information was frequently
given at the sittings which went beyond the knowledge possessed
by the sitters.

The meeting then adjourned.

222 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1898.

[NOTE. — It is proposed to postpone the further discussion of Mrs.
Piper's trance phenomena till after the issue of Part II. of Dr.
Hodgson's Report. At the meeting on April 22nd, a paper on
" Coincidences " will be read by Miss ALICE JOHNSON. See p. iii. of
cover. — ED.]

CORRESPONDENCE.

[The Editor is not responsible for opinions expressed by Correspondents.]

CRYSTAL-GAZING.

In answer to Sir William Crookes's questions about crystal-gazing [see
Jon rnal for March, pp. 201-2], I may offer a few remarks. I have requested
Miss Angus to be so good as to make experiments with Iceland spar, and
will report results. A friend, well-known in letters, informs me that in his
case crystal pictures are the only objects of vision not affected by his.
spectacles, and he also draws my attention to a recent newspaper statement
that the pictures presented by mirage in the desert are made more dis-
tinct through a field-glass. My friend sees crystal pictures more vividly
than actual objects of vision. His experiments, as far as I am aware,
present no hint of telepathy. Observing, in his first attempt, the face
of a friend in Australia, he turned the glass, when the face appeared in
profile.

On one occasion, when crystal-gazing in an historic scene, Miss Angus
told me that the figures seemed to be small and far away, deep in the glass.
In the case of the view of an accident on a race-course (in my paper), I
understood from her that she seemed to be in the scene, and, on that
occasion only, felt "excited," owing to anxiety about the rider who
was hurt.

Since my paper was written, a comparatively large number of people of
both sexes tried the glass ball with success. (1) Two ladies and one
gentleman (whose telepathic scry has been recorded in the Journal) were
particularly interesting. All three saw pictures, and all three were sceptical,
maintaining that the pictures were constructed out of reflections and points de
repere. We tried this experiment, which I suggested on the spot, after we
met. The gentleman, Mr. R., scried in one corner of the room, one of the
ladies, Miss R. A., in the other ; they were facing each other, with their
backs to different walls. The gentleman then left the room with me, and
told me that he had seen a picture of an old lady in furs. We returned, and
asked the lady what she had seen. She had seen an old lady writing letters.
The reflections in the glasses cannot have been the same in both cases, and
no old lady was in the room. My friends remained sceptical, and held to
the theory of reflections. Perhaps I should add that J had been sceptical
abou4" fhe "ghostly" experiences of the two young ladies; one of which
has " -ared in the Society's Proceedings. Again, (2) I asked a friend, well-
known 7?n'the singular and valuable accuracy of his historical researches, to

AIM:, 1898.] Oorrwpondeno*. 223

look iii ili.' li.-ill. In about five minutes he snw three faces, one of a girl in
a straw hat (full face), another face in profile, the third was of a smooth-
shaven man, — my friend wearing ;i bean I. ll«- tried to account for all three
by reflections. I saw the rellections, but, of course, none of the faces. On
unking experiments later, my friend was unsuccessful, but he was, through-
out, consciously studying the reflections in the glass. He was wholly
iin:ici|uaintod with tho topic of crystal-gazing. (3) Several people, not
known to myself, saw a great number of pictures in a glass lent to them by
a friend. Indeed, they were delighted with the vividness and variety of the
scenes and moving figures, sometimes recognised, sometimes not. A map
of America, scenes in Algeria, ships, relations at a distance, and so forth,
were presented. Nobody was successful in seeing pictures attributable to
thought-transference, as the sceptical scryer mentioned in the first case (1)
has certainly done, much to his chagrin, his mind being adverse to the
"mystical."

It appears to me that some, at least, of these fancy pictures are seen just
as pictures in the tire are seen. I can see no pictures in the fire, nor in the
glass ball. The vividness and movement of the glass pictures, as whejj a
lady is seen twirling her parasol on her shoulders (a familiar action with her,
though she was wholly unknown to the scryer) scarcely seem consistent with
the theory of points de repere. The same difficulty arises in the case of
Miss Angus's now long series of pictures of scenes and persons necessarily
unknown to her, but confirmed by letters from Egypt and India, written
before the " scries," and received after them. An account of some of these
will be added to my paper read to the Society.

Quite apart from questions of telepathy, or clairvoyance, crystal-gazing
seems to deserve the attention of psychologists, as illustrating the varieties
of sub-conscious imagination.

Among the many persons among whom I have now found the faculty,
the general health, as an almost universal rule, was excellent. The men and
women seemed robust and wholesome, and were of all sorts of ranks, ages,
and occupations. In no single case have I seen or heard of any sign of
" dissociation, " drowsiness, or incipient trance. Miss Angus's best experi-
ments were conducted among friends who were, as one of them said,
" frivoling," and chaffing the experimenter. The arrival of a letter next day
from an Indian native State, confirming the accuracy of Miss Angus's
observations, and of another from a distant place in this countrj-, rather
altered their attitude.

A. LANG.

St. Andrews, March 8th.

[Mr. Lang sends the following statement by Miss Angus. — Ed.]

It is difficult to state exactly how pictures appear to me, when I look in
a crystal. After focussing my eye for some time on a particular spot of light
in the ball, my mind becomes aware that it may expect to see a vision ; but,
as far as I can judge, the moment the vision comes, the ball seems to
disappear, so it is difficult for me to say if my pictures are actually seen in

224 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APE., 1898.

the crystal, or only projected outside in the space between the eye and the
ball. It is only when I suddenly remember that it is a picture and try to
examine the detail more closely, so as to describe it to the anxious on-
looker, that the ball, with all its tantalising reflections, at once comes back
and the picture vanishes, very often refusing to return.

My pictures are not in any way stationary, in fact they are mere
lightning glimpses, and to me the most wonderful fact is, that in such a
momentary Hash, a whole scene, often with minute detail, can leave such a
vivid impression in my mind.

Sometimes, after I have put the crystal down, I seem to remember
another point in the picture, that I had not at the moment taken any notice
of, but were I to state these details an hour or two afterwards, I fear I
would spoil my own case and be accused of more imagination than I have
been gifted with !

While I am describing the vision, it may not still be there, although T
keep my eye focussed ; but I find that another picture, which sometimes I
can at once recognise as bearing a relation to the first, flashes across the
ball, even although the first may not return.

The pictures are to me, for the moment, " real scenes," the figures " real
people," and that they appear small to me is only because they seem a long
way off. I would certainly describe them as being represented life size.

THE "SPIRIT" HYPOTHESIS.
To the Editor of the JOURNAL or THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

DEAR SIR, — The letter from Mr. St. George Lane Fox in the Journal for
February is both interesting and suggestive. Especially the parable of the
tornado. It seems to me, however, that the same simile may, with great
appropriateness, be carried further than has been done by Mr. Lane Fox,
and that it may furnish a common ground for the "spiritualist" and
himself. Let us suppose the tornado originating, we know not how, in an
elevated mountain region. It goes sweeping down towards the plains, then
crosses a sandy desert, then enters a region of forest's and streams, where
we lose sight of it. It is the same tornado all the time. But, during its
passage across the desert, it fills the air with clouds of sand, — it becomes
visible as a sand storm. Arrived at the edge of the desert, it again drops
the " muddy vesture of decay," and goes careering along over the hills and
vales, woods and streams, of a beautiful and fertile land. It is the same
tornado all the time.

So with the human tornado, — that combination of force, power, intelli-
gence and life, which we call a man. It is not now the question where it
comes from, or whether it comes at all, " trailing clouds of glory." But the
question is, what becomes of the human, tornado, when it reaches the edge
of the sandy desert — the end of its earthly journey. The special interest of
investigations such as those that have been made with Mrs. Piper consists

Ant., is; »s . i Correapondence. 225

in the aid they give towards a solution of tho question, — What becomes of
the hum in tornado at this point of its career ! Does it come to an end ? Or
can we trace its progress further into regions yet nntrod ? Much of t la-
recent evidence tends to prove that it still exists, that it is the same tornado
that manifested itself here.

May we not therefore leave the question as to whether " our bodies are
animated by an independent and detachable concrete entity, a sort of lump
of spirit in human form, which Hies out of the body at death," as a subsidiary
matin- altogether. Whatever may be the real nature of our personality, the
evidence is very strong that it survives the change we call death. Call us
tornadoes, if you will, combinations of force and intelligence, starting we
know not how — coming we know not whence ; but our mission as tornadoes,
our independent existence, does not appear to be finished when we reach
the boundray of the earthly desert, and emerge from the blinding sand into
the clear sunshine beyond. — Yours truly, •

EDWARD T. BENNETT.

March 15th, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — The letter of Mr. Schiller in the March Journal shows that
he has misunderstood my meaning ; I do not, as he supposes, deny the
persistence of individuality after death. The object of my letter was an
endeavour to clear away certain delusions in regard to individuality, which I
believe to be widely prevalent, more especially among those who call them-
selves " Spiritualists." I tried to show that the conception of individuality
as a concrete "spirit" entity, permanent, isolated, and detachable, was a
mistaken conception altogether, and that, as it had no existence at all, it
\v,-is nonsense to talk of it surviving the body ; from which it would
naturally follow that the contention as to whether or not it explained
Mrs. Piper's trance phenomena was quite futile.

Individuality, as I understand it, implies a connected sequence of
experiences, phenomenal or psychic, which experiences are interdependent
and correlated, although extending over wide ranges of spirituality.
The mistake, I take* it, is to assume that anything that can properly be
called identify subsists as a moyeable entity between one stage of individual
existence and another.

I maintain that the idea of an unchangeable "spirit" occupying a definite
position in space is an incongruity resting on the old fallacy that a cause is
identical with its effect. Cause and effect is an expression of the law of
phenomenal existence, including, of course, all mental states ; there need
be no resemblance between them, much less should they be regarded as
identical.

In conclusion, let me say that if certain people calling themselves
"Spiritualists" deny that they believe in any such incongruity as I have
indicated, I can only reply that it is a pity they should adopt the same
designation as those whose phraseology suggests a belief in it. — Yours
faithfully,

St. GEORGE LANK Fox.

226 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1898.

REPORT OF EXPERIMENTS IN THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE
MADE BY THE HYPNOTIC COMMITTEE.

The Hypnotic Committee have thought it desirable to publish the
results of experiments in thought-transference, which were made with
Miss Jennings during 1897, at first in London and afterwards at
Folkestone. No details are given, as the successes are so slightly over
chance that nothing beyond a bare record is considered necessary.

Suit
Right.

Number
Right.

Card

Right.

Total No. of
Experiments.

Number of Successes
Most probable number of successes

190
186

20
14 or 15

745

(For the Hypnotic Committee), J. G. SMITH.

THE CURE OF WARTS BY SUGGESTION.

In the Journal for January, 1897, some cases were given of the
cure of warts by suggestion. The following recent case has been sent
to us by Miss M. H. Mason, Associate S.P.R.

WART CHARMING.

January 24M, 1898.

SIR, — A recent case of the cure of warts by " suggestion " may be of
interest.

On Thursday, IGth September, 1897, I made an official inspection of
some children chargeable to South Marylebone, boarded out under the
supervision of a committee at Haselbury Bryan, in Dorsetshire. I was
accompanied by Miss McKee, a Poor Law Guardian of South Marylebone.

As it was my first visit of inspection here, I first called on the Secretary
of the Committee, Canon Wheeler, and asked him if he would like to see
me inspect the children. He accepted my offer, and together we went to
the school, where some of the children were, it being in school hours.
There was no place there where we could see them conveniently, so Canon
Wheeler unlocked an empty cottage close by and took us in there, with the
children. I found one boy, aged about nine, whom I will call X. Y., with
his hands literally covered with warts, and there were some even on his
.arms and legs. They were so numerous, large, and prominent, that he
•could not avoid knocking and making them bleed till they were actually
painful. It was the worst case of warts I ever saw.

Ant., l.-.is ] C(186. 227

I was told that ho \v;is thus alllicted with them wlien first boarded out
hriv "ii lltli .Juno, 1897, and that they had remained in the same condition
ever since, i.e., a little over three months.

I determined to try the experiment of a charm, and looked round for
some means of effecting it. There was nothing whatever in this empty
cottage but one loose brick. So I went out, procured a leaf, and in the most
impressive manner I could, put it under the brick in the empty fireplace,
showing the hoy \\hat I did, and tolling him that in three months' time he
must ask Canon Wheeler to take him back to the cottage to look if the leaf
was still under the brick, and he would find that his warts were gone.

I have now received the following letter from Canon Wheeler : —

The Rectory, Haselbury Bryan, Sturminster Newton, Dorset.

December 30th, 1897.

DEAR Miss MASON, — I cannot help writing to tell you the result of your
charm for exorcising his warts from poor little X. Y. They have entirely
disappeared. . . . — Very sincerely yours,

R. F. WHEELEK.

I have also seen Miss McKee since, and she has written the following
statement : —

January 7th, 1898.

I was present with Miss Mason when she performed the charm for
X. Y. 's warts in September. I can corroborate her statement as to how
numerous and bad they were.

ELLEN C. McKEE.

I should perhaps add that the boy was of average health, but not quite
average intellect, having a deficiency of memory. . . .

M. H. MASON.

CASE.

-M.C1. 96.

The following case is the result of a simple experiment by one of
our members.

The Editor of the S.P.R. JOURNAL.

8, Jasper Road, S.E., January 17M, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — On the 15th of this month my housekeeper lost my latch
key. She used it in the forenoon of that day for coming into the house, and
missed it before she had occasion to go out again. Having searched for it in
vain the best part of yesterday, she came to the conclusion that when she
entered the house she must have left it in the lock and that it had heen
carried off by a tramp. I looked myself for the key in every likely place,
and in its absence thought my housekeeper's conclusion was probably the

228 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [APR., 1898.

right one. Last night I read the account in Vol. XI. Proceeding* S.P.R., of

the lady who lost a book which was afterwards found on "the blue room
bed." I said to myself " I wish I could find that key." " Where is it ? " I
asked my subliminal self, and the good Anthony, the patron saint of the Lost
Property Office — put these words into my head : " It's in the kitchen table
drawer." At breakfast this morning my housekeeper said she had not slept
all night from worrying about that latch key. I remarked that I had dreamt
it was in the kitchen table drawer. " Oh no, sir," she replied. " I've looked
there and everywhere." I then went into the kitchen with her and opened
the table drawer — and there found the key. My housekeeper was certainly
as astonished as myself, and admitted that she hadn't looked in that
particular drawer for it as she had -never put it there, before. She supposes
that in the present instance the drawer must have been a little open when
she put her parcels on the table, and that the key at the same moment fell
from her hand into it. — Yours faithfully, -^ TT \yJLSON

We wrote to Mr. Wilson for additional information ; he replies as

follows : —

8, Jasper Road, S.E., January 23rd, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — In reply to your inquiries about the lost latch key incident :

1. I have never put the key in the kitchen table drawer.

2. The key is practically for the use of the housekeeper. There is but
one latch key, and she keeps it. She is alone in the house all day, and
requires it to let herself in when she goes shopping. She goes to her home
at night and takes the key with her. Very rarely I ask her to leave the key
with me when she is leaving. On Saturday last she missed the key when she
was on the point of going home at night. She at once told me of it. I said
" When did you have it last ?" and she replied " To let myself in at about
midday, and haven't been out since, and no one has been into the house." I
said " It must be in the house, have a good look for it to-morrow." The
next day she looked for it "everywhere," — excepting of course the right
place. She says she never puts it in any drawer. She usually puts it in her
pocket ; occasionally she puts it on the kitchen table or dresser whilst she is
disposing of her parcels. When she told me on Sunday that she couldn't
find the key, I went into the kitchen to look for it. I cast my eyes over the
two dressers, on the hooks on them, and on nails in the walls, and on
the mats ; but I did not look into any drawer. It is very probable that the
housekeeper had rested the key on the table, intending to place it at once in
her pocket. Forgetting it, she may have have later on swept it into the open
drawer. I had little doubt on Sunday night that the key had been left in
the door at midday on Saturday, and had been carried off by some tramp or
mischievous boy, and so thought my housekeeper. — Yours faithfully,

D. H. WILSON.

I have read Mr. Wilson's account of the key and say it is quite correct.

(Signed) JANE BRIGGS.

No. CXLIX.-VoL. VIII. MAY, 1898.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

The Council 229

General Meeting 229

Obrmpondenoe : —

Mr. Lane Fox versus Spirit Identity 231

K\]>friment* in Thought-Transference 233

Curious Knockings '-33

Cases 23*

Obituary : Dr. G. B. Ermacora 241

THE COUNCIL.

Owing to the absence, from illness and other causes, of most of the
Members of Council who usually attend, there was 110 quorum for the
meeting called for April 22nd. The next meeting will be on Friday,
May 20th, at 4.30 p.m., at the Rooms of the Society, 19, Buckingham
Street, W.C.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 92nd General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, April 22nd, at 4 p.m.; COLONEL
J. HARTLEY in the chair.

A paper by Miss ALICE JOHXSON on " Coincidences " was read by
Dr. Hodgson.

Miss Johnson discussed coincidences of kinds which would not
have been expected beforehand, and which sometimes suggested a
relation of cause and effect between the two coinciding events ; this
suggestion, however, being often fallacious. In psychical research,
the question whether the coincidences which formed the main material
for study could be attributed to chance was a fundamental one. Tho

230 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1898.

question had been extensively discussed, and definite reasons — statis-
tical and other — had been given for answering it in the negative as
far as some classes of the coincidences dealt with were concerned ; but
in regard to the whole investigation, it still remained open.

A number of odd coincidences had been put together by the
author for comparison with those met with in psychical research, and
she attempted to consider whether they were due to some known cause
which was not immediately obvious, and, if not, whether there was any
reason to suppose that they were not the result of chance. In deciding
on this question, the degree of improbability of their occurrence was
an important factor ; but in most cases only a very rough estimate of
the probability could be formed, and on general grounds alone. Cases
had been chosen for treatment chiefly on the ground of the apparent
improbability of their occurrence, — the common-sense impression of
their oddness. The improbability in at least one case where a
numerical estimate was possible was greatly in excess of the improba-
bility of any one of the coincidences met with in psychical research, —
so far as these could be estimated numerically. But the proof that
these psychical coincidences were beyond chance did not depend on
the degree of improbability of any one coincidence, but on the accumu-
lation of many coincidences of certain well-defined types ; and in
deciding whether other odd coincidences were accidental, we had to
consider whether they too fell into natural classes too numerous to be
accounted for by chance.

The question was complicated by an inevitable uncertainty as to
which coincidences were due to chance and which were not. All that
the theory of probability could prove was that out of a certain
number of events, the most likely number of coincidences was so-and-
so. If the actual number was largely in excess of this, it was
probable that something beyond chance had operated in the whole
group of events taken together. But this proved nothing about any
individual coincidence. The very same reasoning that had led to the
conclusion that the whole group of coincidences taken together was not
due to chance, involved the assumption that some of the coincidences
were due to chance, and afforded no criterion by which these coinci-
dences could be distinguished from the others. In course of time,
enough might be learnt about all the processes concerned to enable us
to distinguish between casual coincidences and those which arose from
a known cause, and reasoned speculation based on psychical research
had, in fact, reached such a stage that we might often be more or less
convinced on rational grounds that a given coincidence belonged to
one or the other class. But in the present state of obscurity as to

. 1898.] Correspondence. 231

tin- mode of action of psychical causes, the statistical argument was
the strongest one that could be brought to bear in proof of their
reality.

Mu. HAYES said that the suggestive comments of the author of the
paper concerning the action of the subliminal consciousness in one of
the cases quoted, reminded him of an incident which had occurred to
a friend, who sent him an account of it on the following day. This
friend had been playing whist the previous night, and was disturbed
in the game by a child crying upstairs. The cards had just been
dealt and the dealer was laying down the trump card. The friend
thrust his cards in his pocket and went upstairs, and as he returned,
it occurred to him that his subliminal consciousness might do good
service if it could arrange his cards for him, so that he might not keep
the other players waiting, especially as they had but little time left to
finish the game. When he took the cards out of his pocket he found
them arranged precisely as it was his custom to arrange his "hand."
Mr. Hayes apparently suggested that his friend's subliminal conscious-
ness may actually have been concerned in the arranging of the cards.

MR. PODMORE inquired whether it was not more reasonable to
suppose that in the incident mentioned by Mr. Hayes, the person
concerned had actually arranged his cards himself in the ordinary
way, and forgotten that he had done so.

The meeting then adjourned.

CORRE SPONDENCE.

[The Editor is not responsible for opinions expressed b]i Correspondents.]

MR. LANE Fox versus SPIRIT IDENTITY.

1 am afraid Mr. Lane Fox's letter in the April Journal seems to me more
unintelligible than his first. It does indeed appear from it that his objection
to the ' spirit ' hypothesis is of an a priori metaphysical character, but beyond
that darkness and chaos reign. He studiously evades the main point as to
whether ' spirit ' phenomena justify us in attributing them to persons in, the
same sense as tee recognise the personality of our fellow men. Instead, he
talks about a 'persisting individuality after death,' but admits no identity.
Individuality "implies a connected sequence of experiences" (aware of itself
as such or not ?) " phenomenal or psychic " (are these exclusives ?), " which are
interdependent and correlated," but not "anything that can properly be
called identity . . . between one 'stage of individual existence and
another." That is, state A causes another B, but there is no identity
between A and B. Thus the ' persisting individuality ' is the fact that the
world goes on, but the father is not the son. Truly a profound and

282 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1898.

inspiring dogma, the philosophic import of which I refrain from discussing.
I will permit myself only one question, which it irresistibly suggest*,
and that is — Has Mr. Lane Fox. any personal identity? If he has, what does
it consist in ? If he has not (and I suppose he ought not to have on his own
theory) how does he hold himself together and prevent his successive states
of consciousness ('stages of individual existence ') from getting lost, strayed,
or stolen ? Perchance he keeps a big diary and traces in it the individuality
of ' Mr. Lane Fox from day to day ;' but even so he must thank his Karma
or his Mahatma every morning that he is still the man he was, and has not
changed into another person of the same name over night. But I must not
transgress the line which separates the sublime from the ridiculous, and must
leave Mr. Lane Fox himself (if he has a self) to grapple with the practical
difficulty in which his theory involves him.

F. C. S. SCHILLEH.

Mr. Schiller has clearly pointed out the fundamental confusions involved
in the statements of Mr. Lane Fox, and I add a few words for the purpose
of showing that the particular "delusions in regard to individuality" which
Mr. Lane Fox says that " the object of his letter was an endeavour to clear
away," appear to have been those in Mr. Lane Fox's own mind. He does
not, however, in this case, seem to have succeeded in his object. These
delusions were otherwise described by Mr. Lane Fox in his first letter
(Journal for February, p. 184), as "crudely materialistic notions concerning
our spiritual existence," and he showed special umbrage at the terms
" spirit " and "spiritualist."

As regards the "crudely materialistic notions," Mr. Lane Fox expressly
compared our " individual existence " with a tornado. The absurdity of
this crudely materialistic comparison was pointed out by Mr. Schiller in his
letter in the Journal for March.

As regards the use of such words as "spirit" and "spiritualist,"
Mr. Lane Fox uses similar terms, since he speaks, in his letter in the
Journal for February, of " our spiritual existence," and in the Journal for
April his extraordinary description of "individuality" is as follows: —
"Individuality, as I understand it, implies a connected sequence of ex-
periences, phenomenal or psychic, which experiences are interdependent and
correlated, although extending over wide ranges of spirituality."*

In Mr. Lane Fox's statements, then, we find a combination of "crudely
materialistic notions" with the use of the terms "spiritual'' and
"spirituality." This is the combination apparently which Mr. Lane Fox
particularly abhors. That he should suffer from these "pernicious delu-
sions " is perhaps not remarkable, but why his onslaught upon them ?
Probably his lack of personal identity may explain this violent attack by
Mr. Lane Fox upon himself. I wonder which side he is on now, and whether
either or neither is victorious.

R. HODGSON.

* How does this apply to sticks and stones ?

M\Y, Curious Knockings. 233

K\ri:KIMKNTs IN Tllot c;HT-TRAN8FERENCE.

To the Editor of the, JOURNAL OP THE SOCIETY FOH PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
3, Hare Courb, Inner Temple, April 5th, 1898.

SIR, — May I be permitted to suggest that, if the results of experiments
in thought-transference are worth publishing at all, it is always worth
while to publish the figures for the probable errors as well as for the most
probable number of successes. If these figures are not published, the
reader has the trouble of working out the sums for himself.

I should also like to suggest that the experiments should be conducted
with packs of cards consisting of two suits and only two numbers in each
suit. Many such packs can be constructed out of, say, one dozen packs of
similar pattern. The advantage of using packs for which the chance of
guessing correctly either the suit or the number is one half is that the
probability curves are then normal and not skew, and consequently the
deductions to be drawn from the results obtained are free from certain
difficulties of calculation.

I think that it might be useful to collect together the results of all the
similar experiments that have been recorded, and to see whether any infer-
ences can be drawn from the total results.

And lastly it might be worth while to investigate whether there is any
correlation between success in guessing suits and success in guessing
numbers. My impression is that there appeared to be some such correlation
in some results that I once looked at.

I presume that in all the experiments the cards are replaced in the pack
after they have been guessed ; I have heard of experiments where this has
not been done, and the difficulty of calculating the probabilities is thereby
increased. — Yours faithfully,

CHARLES PERCY SAXOER.

CURIOUS KNOCKINGS.

The following case of " knockings " has been reported by one of our
Associates, the Rev. E. R. Gardiner, M. A., Vicar of Long "VVittenham,
Abingdon. The obvious suggestion is of course that the knocks were
made by "practical jokers," but apparently the witnesses are not
satisfied with any such explanation. Mr. Gardiner writes : —

Long Wittenham, Abingdon, January 13th, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — Enclosed is a cutting from the Abinydon Herald of January
8th, of a letter I wrote to that paper. The matter has created a good deal
of discussion in this neighbourhood, and I hear from Wallingford that the
same occurrence took place at the same time. Perhaps the matter might
interest some readers of the S.P.R. Journal, and I should be glad if you
could take some notice of it in the next issue.

I cannot get at any satisfactory explanation myself. It has been
suggested that the sounds were "seismic" in their origin — this seems to

234 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1898.

me unlikely as animals were not disturbed and there was no shock felt
anywhere. I venture to ask whether you can suggest any explanation of
the phenomena. — Yours faithfully,

EDW. R. GARDINER,

Associate S.P.R.

The cutting referred to by Mr. Gardiner is as follows : —
A GHOST AT LONG WITTENHAM.

The following has been sent for publication : —

SIR,— Some rather curious occurrences, which may possibly interest some
of your readers, took place in this parish on New Year's Eve. Let me give
my own experience in detail : After taking the usual midnight service in
church I came in at quarter-past twelve. About five minutes afterwards, as
I was sitting quietly smoking, with no one in the room but my dog, I was
startled by hearing some half-a-dozen distinct raps on the window pane.
The dog, who is always most sensitive to the presence of strangers, took no
notice. Of course, I ought at once to have gone out, but did not do so for
reasons which need not be mentioned. Five minutes afterwards I went into
another room, and in a minute or two heard most distinct knocking on the
wall close to the window. I looked out but saw nothing, though it was a
fairly clear moonlight night. I immediately made a note of the occurrence
on paper and then went to bed. Nothing more happened, but next morning
I was asked by a parishioner whether I had been disturbed in any way on
the previous night. I then detailed my experience, and on making further
enquiries in the parish found that a a great many houses the same or similar
occurrences had taken place. In many cases the poundings on the doors
and walls were very loud and the inmates of the houses were woke up, and
many of them were for some time in a state of considerable alarm. Every-
one appeared to agree about the time ; and not only was this village
disturbed, but at Appleford, an adjoining parish, the same thing took place
at precisely the same hour. Our village policeman was patrolling the parish
between 12 and 1, and informs me that if any practical joker was abroad
at that time he must have been seen or heard. I have been a member
of the Society for Psychical Research for some years and have had a
little experience in their mysterious affairs, and though in nine cases
out of ten they are easily explained, the tenth very often remains an
insoluble mystery. I should be glad if any of your readers could throw
any light on the matter, and I would only request that such sugestions as
rats, owls, kicking horses, branches of trees, etc., should not be made, as
that is only a polite way of calling a fellow creature an idiot. Those who
did not hear the sounds suggest that they were fog signals at Didcot ; those
who did, including myself, consider the suggestion quite absurd, and the
explanation totally inadequate. Fog signals have never, that I know of,
produced taps on a window pane ; why should they do so on the eve of the
year 1898 ? — I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

EDW. R. GARDINER,
Vicar of Long Wittenham.

IS'.IH. | Oar i»n« K itockinga. 23.>

In reply t<> imiuiries, Mr. Gardiner writes: —

February 12th, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — ... I am fully convinced that the thing could not
liavi IMTII caused by " practical jokers," as it occurred at the same time at
several villages some miles apart ; that it was a moonlight night, and that no
footsteps were heard by anyone, nor was anyone seen. I have interviewed a
uiv.it many from whom I have not taken the trouble to procure signed state-
ments, as the stories are all in substantial agreement. It occurred at several
outlying cottages some distances from any road.

Mr. Townsend, who signs one statement, has worked on the G.W.
Railway for 30 years, and has had a good deal to do with fog signals, and
scouts the idea of the noises having anything to do with them, as indeed
does everyone who heard the sounds. I could get more signed statements if
you think it advisable, but they would be mere repetitions of the same
thing. I vouch for the reliability of all the witnesses whose statements T
enclose.

Everybody agrees that, whatever the cause may be, practical joking is
entirely out of the question. It is difficult, perhaps, to impress this convic
tion as strongly upon another person as one feels it oneself. — I am, yours
very faithfully,

EDW. R. GARDINER,

Associate S.P.R.

Mr. Gardiner sends the following statements : —

From a Gentleman who does not wish his name published.

* * *, near Wallingford, January 10th, 1898.

SIR, — I have to-day read your letter to the editor of the Oxford Times in
which you speak of the mysterious tappings at about 12.20 a.m. on Saturday
morning, January 1st. My experience is very much like yours. I was
sitting reading here with no one in the house but myself, when I was some-
what surprised to hear a rather imperative knock, apparently administered
with the knuckles, at either the bedroom shutters or the partially glass door
of the porch. This knocking was repeated in about five minutes. I opened
the window and the shutters and looked out but could see nothing. This
house is a bungalow (shutters outside the windows).— I am, Sir, yours truly,

A. B.

P.S. — I thought when I heard the first five or six raps, that a messenger
\\.-is bringing word of some friend's illness.

.From John Goodwin, Labourer, Long Wittenham.

I went to bed between 11 and 12 on the night of December 31at. At
half-past 12 I was awake, and heard two or three knocks at the front door.
My little boy, who was in the same room, was awake and said, "What's
that, Daddy?" About two or three minutes afterwards, I heard the same
thing again, and then I looked out of the window which looks on to the

236 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1898.

front door, but saw nothing. It was moonlight ; I heard no footsteps. I
have often heard fog signals on the line at Didcot, but they never before
produced anything like these sounds.

(Signed) JOHN GOODWIN, + his mark.

From Mrs. Ramsdale, Long Wittenham.

I was sitting in my kitchen at about 12.30, as the midnight peal was
ringing in the New Year, when I was startled by loud knocking, as if with
knuckles, on my front door. I got up and cried out twice, " Who's there ? "
Then I looked out at dining and drawing-room windows and saw no one,
though it was moonlight. I then went back to the kitchen, and was reading,
and in about 5 minutes more I heard again the same knocking. I instantly
rushed to the door, not more than 6 or 8 yards off, and thought, "I'll catch
you this time ! " I opened the door, ran out, but saw nothing. I then ran
round to the back of the house, but neither saw nor heard anything. I was
very much surprised, and then went upstairs and looked out of the back
window. It was as bright as day, but I could see nothing at all. I went to
bed, but heard nothing more.

(Signed) MARY RAMSDALE.

From Mrs. Eason, wife of Tom Eason, Baker, Long Wittenham.

I am the wife of Tom Eason, baker, of Long Wittenham. I was lying
awake on the night of December 31st, 1897, and January 1st, 1898, and
between 12 and half-past, while the church-bells were ringing, I heard a
knocking which appeared to me to be in a shed near our house. I heard
these sounds three times, each time more distinctly, and the third time it
seemed to be on the front door. My husband, whom I had woke, thought
the same thing, and sat up and listened for footsteps, but heard none.
After that we were not disturbed again. My mother, who was sleeping in a
room over the front door, says she was awake and listening to the bells, but
heaixl no knocking.

(Signed) EDITH M. EASON.

From Mrs. Bowen, Schoolmistress, Little Wittenham.

I was in bed, but wide awake on the night of December 31st, 1897, and
January 1st, 1898, and about 11.30 I heard a faint rapping (as it seemed) on
the back door. My husband, who was with me, heard the same. About ten
minutes afterwards we heard it again louder. We thought someone was
calling us up. A third time we heard it, but much louder, and on our front
door. I told my husband he must get up, which he did, and opened the
front window and looked out, but there was no one at the front door. I lay
awake for a long time — about an hour — and heard nothing more. Neither
my husband nor I can believe it was fog signals, which we have often heard
in the distance, and they produce a totally different sound.

(Signed) ANNIE J. BOWEN.
EDWIN BOWEN.

M\V, is-.w.] Curious Knockinga. 2.S7

From Miss Eli.nlii Hi Holt, Applefoni, /;•/•/..>•.

I was sitting up for my mother, who was coining from London, at 12.30
on New Year's Eve. I heard a knocking apparently on a door a little
distance off in one direction, and then again shortly afterwards in another
dinr! ion, but not on the door of our house. I thought it was the next door
neighbour, but ascei'tained it was not, as she was not at home. 1 then
roused my uncle who was in bed and told him. He got up and went out
and went all round the row of cottages, six in all, of which ours is No. 6,
l»ut saw nothing nor any lights in the windows. He came back, and then
hrard the knocking again, and went out again determined to find out who or
what it was, but found nothing at all. We then went to bed and to sleep.
I heard the knocking on and off several times from about 12.30 till about one.
I know this time from the cloc'c and also the midnight peal which was

ringing.

(Signed) E. HOLT.

From Mrs. Toivnsend, Littleworth, Appleford, Berks.

I was lying awake on the night of New Year's Eve, 1897, and about 12.30
a.m., as near as I can tell, I heard a knocking which seemed to be at the
front door. It then struck me that it might be my daughter who slept in
another room knocking for me, but as I heard her cough I did not call to
her. I then went to sleep, and later on, i.e., about 2 a.m. — for 1 looked at
the clock — I was woke by my husband who had been aroused by a loud
knocking apparently on the front door. He got up, opened the window,
looked out and called " Hallo !" but saw nobody. Our dog was about, and
though a good watch-dog — taking notice of every strange sound — did not
bark or show any sign of disturbance.

(Signed) JAMES TOWNSEND.

(He signs for his wife who cannot write and corroborates the above.
— E. R. G.~)

From Mrs. Gates, Appleford, Berks.

I was in bed but wide awake at 12.30 on New Year's Eve, 1897, and I
distinctly heard tappings on the front wall of my house underneath my bed-
room window. I was awake till about 2 o'clock, and I heard these sounds
several times during this interval. I did not get up, but feel sure there was
no one about, as I heard no footsteps or any dog barks. I did not wake my
husband, who was sound asleep — also my son.

(Signed) E STHER GATES, + her mark.

From Mrs. Taylor, The Croft, Burcote, near Clifton Hampden.

1 was restless on the night of December 31st, 1897, and wide awake
between 12 and 1. I heard the midnight peal at Clifton Hampden. At
about 12.30, as near as I can tell, I was startled by hearing loud and long
knocking, apparently with knuckles, on Mrs. Bargus' door, which is next
door to me but all under the same roof. About 5 or 10 minutes afterwards,
1 hoard it again distinctly on the same place. I did not wake my husband,

238 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1898.

but mentioned it to him in the morning, and also to Mrs. Bargus who had
heard nothing. I did not think much more of it till I saw Mr. Gardiiier'a
letter in the Oxford Times. I have a dog which is very sensitive to sounds,
but he took no notice. Miss Stephens, who lives close by, was up at that
time, but heard nothing at all.

(Signed) M. TAYLOR.

From Mrs. Butter, Grocer, Brightwdl, Wallinyford.

I was awake between 12.15 and 12.30 on New Year's morning, 1898, and
was startled by hearing distinct knocking apparently next door ; then a few
minutes afterwards, knocks sounded muffled as if on our shutters, then a.
third time as if on a door the other side. My husband heard the same. I
got up and opened the window and stood there some minutes and could see
nothing. I cannot believe it had any connection with fog signals at Didcot,
the sound of which I know very well.

(Signed) E. M. BUTLER.

Can any theory better than " practical joking " be suggested for
this case ?

CASES.

L. 1101. A* P"

This case comes from Mr. F. W. Hildyard, Associate S.P.R. See-
Gurney's account of Hallucinations in Phantasms of the Living,
especially Vol. L, p. 475, footnote.

Hopefield, Somerton, Somerset, January 1st, 1898.

DEAR MR. MYERS, — I send you notes of two cases that may be of interest..
The importance of them, if they have any, lies in their recent occurrence. I
have been an associate of the Psychical Society for some years, but this is the
first case of which I have had first-hand knowledge. I made notes directly I
was told of the occurrences, and knowing that first impressions are of the
most value in such cases, I have not waited to cast the rough notes into some
orderly form.

The parlour maid, Mary Hollard, the percipient in these cases, and the
cook will no doubt be ready to answer any questions you may wish to-
put. .

I have several times endeavoured to get first-hand psychical experiences,
but hitherto without success. I cannot see anything in crystals, and though
I have attended several spiritualistic seances I have not heard or seen
anything which I deemed of sufficient importance to record.

I shall be glad to give you any further information that I can. I can
find no natural explanation of the appearances here related, and I do not
think the girl was likely to have made a mistake. Her actions and attitude
were just what might have been expected if the appearances had not

MAY, i 0(1868.

been rt-ri^nisi-d at such, but had been taken for what they represented. —
V.. ura truly, jr. HILDYAKU.

M i . Hildyard enclosed the following documents :—

Jnnii.ary 1»£, 1898.

At 9.30 a.m. on December 31st, 1897, Mary Hollard, being in the pantry
with the door open, looked across a narrow passage into the dining room, the
door of which was also open ; from this position she would be able to see a
section of the dining room corresponding to the width of the doorway of the
room. At the end of this section farthest from the door was a window, the
whole of which she would be able to see and a portion of the wall, between
this window and another, occupied by a low bookcase about 4 ft. high
resting on the floor ; in front of this bookcase she saw me standing.
Presuming I was ready for breakfast she began to make the tea. She told
my brother that I had come in, but he ascertained that I was not there.

At the time of the occurrence I was asleep in a house about 60 yards
from the spot in question. The distance between the spot where Mary
Hollard was standing and the bookcase above mentioned is about 10 paces.
The girl is a servant in the employ of my brother, a doctor at the above
address ; she is quite intelligent, of average eyesight, not myopic, and not
hysterical.

On January 1st, 1898, at 10.15 p.m., the same girl was dusting an oak
chest in the hall. Turning her head to the left she saw me at the low gate in
front of the main house door. She noticed me stop to open the gate, and she
also noticed that I was without my hat. I appeared to come through or
partly through the gate, hesitate and turn back, as if I had forgotten some-
thing. She, never doubting that I was about to come in, went to the kitchen
to prepare my breakfast. At the time of this occurrence I was again asleep
at the same place as in the last case.

Later on I came in, walking from the house where I had slept, without my
hat. When I came to the gate I noticed that, owing to a man working at a
plot of ground just inside, a piece of wire fencing lay across and blocked the
gate, so I passed by and came in by a door through the stable opening into
the garden. I cannot recollect whether I stooped to open the gate or no,
but I do remember that I did not notice the obstruction until I was close to
the gate, and that my intention was to come in by this, the usual, way, and
I might have had my hand on the gate before I saw that I could not ; in
fact, as I am writing, the remembrance comes to me that I did think of
stepping over both gate and fence.

Exactly the same thing occurred to me the morning before, December
31st. I was then without a hat, and the gate was similarly obstructed, and I
came in by the stable door.

The distance between the oak chest where the girl was standing, and
from which she would be able to see about half the gate in question, was
six paces.

On this occasion, so convinced was she that I was about to come in to
breakfast, that, finding I did not come, she related the whole occurrence to
the cook, her fellow servant, and also to my brother.

240 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1898.

When later I actually did come in she made her witness of the last in
order that she might be convinced of the reality of my presence. I may
mention that I have both beard and whiskers, being in this respect different
from both my brother and others who might possibly have been about, so
that it would be difficult to make an error in recognition.

The girl has had no other occurrence of like nature before.

Statement of the Percipient.

January ls£, 1898.

I testify that the above statement is a true description of what I saw and
did on the mornings of December 31st, 1897, and January 1st, 1898.

(Signed) MARY HOLLARD.

Statement of the Cook.

January ls£, 1898.

I beg to certify that the above statement which has been read to me is
true as far as it relates to me.

(Signed) ELLEN HARVEY.

In reply to inquiries, Mr. Hildyai'd writes : —

January 6/,/i, 1898.

DEAR DR. HODOSON, — I am in receipt of your note of the 4th inst. Owing
to several cases of illness cropping up, my brother was prevented from coming
to town as he intended, and from the same cause he has his hands very full
of work, but I will endeavour to get the statement you desire.

I have questioned Mary Hollard to ascertain if she has experienced any-
thing of unusual character before, and I find that she has had no experience
of similar character. She had one experience two years ago which may, or
may not, have had an objective basis. At about 10 p.m. in the month of
February or March she was walking on a country road towards the village of
Kingsdon where she lives. She was within 30 yards of her home and had
just parted from her brother-in-law, who had accompanied her so far. He had
turned back and must have been 20 yards away when a dark shape resembling
a dog, only much larger (about the size of a colt), passed her, coming from
the direction towards which she was going. The shape passed silently, and
the road being without lamps she could only see it imperfectly. She was very
frightened and ran home screaming. Her father heard her and came to meet
her ; her brother-in-law neither heard or saw anything and did not, so she
tells me, hear her screaming.

I give this story for Avhat it worth, but I do not attach any importance to
it and I think it is very probable that the shape was actually some animal
which passed her and turned down a side road that was close by.

Regarding your second question as to whether my simulacrum has been
seen before, I remember that on more than one occasion I have been told by
my friends that they have seen me in places where I was not, but the
accounts not being circumstantial I have attached no importance to what I
put down as mistaken recognition. I cannot recall any details, times, or

MAY, 1 ' *£«. 241

I men-Iv it •iiii'iiiber the fact that several times such mist-ikes, as I
deemed them, had been made. — Yours truly,

F. HlLUYAttl).

In a letter of January 7th, Mr. Hildyard enclosed the following
letter from his brother : —

Hopefield, Somerton, Somerset, January 6th, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — Having been asked to make a statement respecting the
occurrence related to your society by my brother, Frederick W. Hildyard, I
append what 1 believe it to be an accurate account of the matter so far as I

;illl roneerned.

On the morning of December 31st, I came downstairs into the dining-
room at about half-past nine, and not seeing my brother, walked out towards
the pantry and remarked to the parlourmaid, Mary Hollard, "Mr. Fred not
come yet {" She replied, " Yes, he has, sir ; I saw him in the dining-room,"
and after an expression of disbelief on my part, added, ' ' and his hat is in
the hall." I replied, "He might have walked over last night without it."
Nothing further was said except that I believe I reiterated that she was
mistaken when the hour went on and my brother did not appear.

( >n the following morning, January 1st, I breakfasted early and went into
the surgery. Some time between ten and half-past, I was passing the door
of the pantry and saw Mary Hollard taking the teapot from the dining-room,
in order to make fresh tea. She spoke to me, saying, " Mr. Fred is here
//u'.s morning, sir ; I have just seen him." I said, "I don't believe it," as I
thought I should have heard him coming in, and, subsequently, having
waited some time, walked into the kitchen, laughing, and said to the cook,
11 H.TU, this girl Mary must be daft ! She has seen him again."

Nothing further was said, and my brother did not come until a hour or
more later. — Faithfully yours,

ROBERT L. HILDYARD.

Dr. R. L. Hildyard replies as follows to lists of questions sent to
him by Mr. F. W. Hildyard :—

Can you remember [whether Mr. F. W. Hildyard's hat was in the hall]
as stated by the percipient ? Yes.

Did Mary see it before seeing me? No. She saw you first and then
upon coming out of pantry and walking up passage into hall she saw the hat
on table under window.

[January 12th. — Mr. F. W. Hildyard said in conversation with me this
afternoon that she probably saw the hat before, at least subconsciously, as she
probably passed the place where it was several times. — R.H.]

1. Was the gardener working at the plot in front of the house —

(a) At the time (9.30, on December 31st) when Mary saw me in the

dining-room ? — She thinks not.

(l>) At 10.15, January 1st, when she saw me at hall door? — Yes, as

I had seen him from my bedroom window.

242 Journal of Society for Psychical Research, [MAY, 1898.

Does she think that she would have mistaken —

« His form outside window for mine in room ?

b His form at door for mine ? — Distinctly not to both questions.

2. Has he any hair on his face (I forget) and would the mistake be
likely ? — No. Slight moustache. Not a bit like you. Not nearly so tall
as you.

3. Has Mary seen me again since t—No.

G. 254. [A. B. 222.]

The following statement of experiences by Nancy M. Miller, M.D.,
was obtained by Dr. M. L. Holbrook, Associate A.B.S.P.R.

41, West 26th St., New York, April 2±th, 1897.

On June 8th, 1896, at Somerville, N. J., I was overlooking a barn which
needed repairs.

With no sign or symbol of a trap-door, a thin board lay on the floor in a
corner and I stooped and lifted it, giving it a toss to replace it, as I thought,
from where it had fallen. " Why, there's a hole ! " is the one thing that I
am conscious of thinking, and the force of the toss I had given precipitated
me into the opening. The board fell back over the hole again, and I went
down about 8 feet on the ground and rocks below. I felt a consciousness
that, as 1 started, my arms were uplifted as they would naturally be from the
tossing of the board upward and backward, and too, they were scraped and
bruised fearfully, the hole so small that it was a ' ' wonder how she ever went
through it."

As I went down, it seems too that my face was turned upward, for I saw
perfectly plain what I think was my spirit form poised above me, a full
length form, recognisable by me as my own self, being clad in a garment
which I had worn that morning and to which I have for years been attached,
keeping it out in the country on this farm place for use whenever I may be
there. The tender, sorrowful sadness depicted in the face and in the
attitude of the spirit form is indelibly impressed upon my mind. And
moreover, with my spirit-eyes I as plainly saw my body go down, saw the
clothing, the skirts fluff out, filling with wind as they naturally would
in falling feet foremost or partially so, as it seems to me I did, through
the air.

There was, to me, no board fallen back between me and my spirit, yet
we were apparently entirely disconnected. I was out of consciousness about
two hours, yet I am told that I gave directions meanwhile what to do and
how to do it. " Ruling passion," I consider it.

My body was nearly mashed — concussion of brain feared, one foot and one
hand liable to be lost— yet not a bone was broken and not a drop of blood
shed except at one ear which was cut across and bled profusely. I felt,
and still feel, that if my spirit had gone down with my body, my life would
have gone out. As it was, my spirit protected my body, and not being hurt

isiis.) C«xe8. 243

with it, iv fiiirivd ;ui(l lias entirely re-hal>ilit.itrd its domicile. So that
myself, body and si)irit, is stronger and in better state than before.

ntlier life-saving experience, by spirit-power, has been mine. This
occurred in 1863.

I was very ill — apparently at death's door with ulceration of stomach and
bowels. No confidence in physicians, and would see none. Enemas of
warm water would alone relieve my agony, which came on every two hours
<>r thereabouts. I had been sick more than a year, and for seventeen days
1 had hovered between life and death. This special day no one except my
mother and myself was in the house. I was unable to move a hand or foot.
A breath, seemingly, would carry me over ; and I remember perfectly that
HS my mother left me to go to a distant room on some errand, there seemed
«n open grave beside me on my right hand as I lay with closed eyes upon
my bed. Suddenly I heard an audible, yes, a loitd, strong whisper, and the
words, " You are washing your boirels M away ! " (This could not have
been a result of my own thought, for it had never occurred to me that
I was being harmed by the process which alone gave me relief.) I opened
my eyes, and at my left hand, close beside the bed, which was a narrow one,
stood the perfect form of my old physician and preceptor, Dr. Field — (Dr.
Field had passed over about two years previous to this time) — for even then
I had begun the study of medicine. His light, straight hair, parted and
combed just as in life, his old-fashioned stock, his peculiar blue eyes,
everything in perfection, though less opaque in appearance than the real,
bodily form, and as I looked the vision began to fade gradually from the
bedside upwards towards the chest, then to the shoulders, neck, and face,
till finally all had disappeared.

I had always and utterly repudiated everything tending towards
spiritualism or spirit return, and now, when it was gone, I said to myself
(and almost out of patience with myself for having credited it) "That was
all my imagination." Immediately, and just as real as the whisper had
been, although I heard nothing, only felt it, something said " I will show
you whether it is imagination '. " And if my body had been lifted and laid
upon a bed of living coals, my experience could not have been more
agonizing. Powerless as I had been to move, I threw off my coverings, and
exclaimed in spirit, "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief." And I
Jutve believed from that very day.

Nothing would have induced me to take another enema. In three days
my sufferings were very much modified, my bowels became natural, and
from that time forth although my recovery was very slow it was sure. Had
a knowledge of the power of mind over matter, and the power within
myself to control and heal myself which has since been vouchsafed me, been
mine at that time, my sufferings need not have been so lingering nor so
trying as they were before health was restored.

Other experiences, for which you may or may not care, have frequently
been mine. For instance, wave following wave of the richest purple passes

244 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [MAY, 1898.

before me (my eyes being always closed), accompanied with such complete-
rest of body and mind that a few minutes of it seems almost equal to a
night's sleep. I always feel that this purple flood foretells success, but
whether it may be that it gives me much sweet rest, that like an elixir
it renders me abler to ensure success in whatever I may desire to-
accomplish, I do not know.

Another purple, — a spot about as large seemingly, as a half dollar, and so-
brilliant as to be almost dazzling, — wheels and wheels around so rapidly as
to be painful to follow it, and at length, may be in a minute, may be only a
second, for I seem to have no thought of time, it slows down and in the
centre, a form (exactly the form of my dear mother) is plainly visible, but
so very small, indeed like as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope ;
this, after a moment, fades and is gone. Then I seem to feel my mother's
presence and converse with her as if present, the replies being felt but

never heard.

* * * * * *

One appearance seems to precede a death near me, as it has come to me
at five different times and has always been followed very soon by a death of
some one in close proximity, but not in my family relations. This
appearance is of a black veil or curtain with infinitesimal red dots not larger
than needle points all over it, but not running together.

NANCY M. MILLER.

OBITUARY: DR. G. B. ERMACORA.

Dr. G. B. Ermacora, founder, and co-editor with Dr. Finzi, of the
Hivista, di Studi Psichici, and a Corresponding Member of the S. P. R. >
died at Rovigo on March 23rd last. The news reached us too late for
notice in the April Journal.

This is a most serious loss for Psychical Research. Dr. Ermacora.
was one of the few men in Europe — they may still, I fear, be counted
on the two hands — who made this study his main care. Disinterested,
dispassionate, modest, open-minded, untiring, he worked at his own.
experiments (of which some have appeared in S. P. R. Proceedings,
Part XXVIII) with anxious elaboration ; while at the same time he
thoroughly assimilated, and accurately reproduced for his readers, what-
ever of value was being done or written in other countries. Among
the various magazines founded with objects analogous to those of our
Proceedings, there was not one more carefully and critically conducted
than the Bivista; — not one to which we might look with more certainty
for an exact, sympathetic, yet not credulous resume of. just those matters
which the student most needed to know.

Let us hope that it may still be found possible to carry on this
important work in Italy in the same spirit.

F. W. H. M.

No. OL.-VoL. VIII. JCNK, 1898.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Members and Associates 245

Meeting of the Council 246

General Meeting 247

Report on Instruments Alleged to Indicate "Cerebral Force" and the '.'Psychic Action

of the Will" 249

Correspondence : —

The Consciousness of Dying .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 250

Spiritualism and Spirit Identity 255

The Divining Kod— To American Members 259

Obituary : —

R. Pearsall Smith 259

The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone 200

NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

ALBAN, Miss MARY H., Hotel Bellevue, Via Nazionale, Rome.

ALLEN, MRS. M. S., Picton House, Baling.

Bagnell, Mrs., 22, Down-street, May fair, London, W.

CHARLTON, Miss FRANCES M., 76, Eaton-terrace, London, S.W.

BARTON, HUGH, Beninghoe, Hertford.

FEILDING, HON. and REV. BASIL, PH.D., Scot's College, Rome.

Ih.itscHEL, COLONEL JOHN, Royal Engineers, Slough.

HOLMES, EDMOND G. A., 4, Rawlinson-road, Oxford.

MALEVSKY-MALEVITCH, MADAME S., 23, Millionnaia, St. Petersburg.

MORRIS, CHARLES A., 10, Throgmorton-avenue, London, E.G.

OWEN, Miss LILIAN S., 5, Whitehall-gardens, London, S.W.

Raworth, Edwin, 5, South Park-road, Harrogate.

REYNOLDS, MRS. HENRY, 11, Ridgmount-gardens, London, W.C.

STAFFORD, MRS., 9, Fitzwilliam-square, Dublin.

TALUOT, CAPTAIN FREDERICK G., Rifle Brigade, 15, Cromwell-road, S.W

Wells, H. G., Heatherlea, Worcester Park, Surrey.

246 Journal of Society for Psychical liesearck. [JUNE, 1898.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

BLOCK, Louis, 211, Main-street, Davenport, Iowa.

CASSATT, Miss MARY, c/o J. G. Cassatt, 1,418, Spruce-st., Philadelphia, Pa.

COZENS, J. C., Amsterdam, N.Y.

Dow, Lorenzo, 255, W. 92nd-street, New York, N.Y.

Du VAL, Miss JESSIE C., 919, Carlisle-street, Philadelphia, Pa.

HENSHAW, MRS. HARRIET A., The Kempton, Berkely and Newbury-

streets, Boston, Mass.

HILL, REV. JOHN J., Sewickley, Allegheny Co., Pa.
PAXTON, Miss JOSEPHINE E., Bethany College, Topeka, Kansas.
PEEBLES, J. M., M.D., 3,121, K-street, San Diego, Cal.
REED, S. A., Century Building, St. Cloud, Minn.
SMITH, E. B., c/o Minneapolis Journal, Minneapolis, Minn.
STEPHENSON, J. E., Ansonia, Ohio.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held at the Rooms of the Society,
19, Buckingham Street, on May 20th. The President occupied the
chair. There were also present, Professor H. Sidgwick, Dr. R.
Hodgson, Dr. G. F. Rogers, Dr. A. Wallace, Mr. F. W. H. Myers,
and Mr. H. Arthur Smith.

The minutes of last meeting were read and signed as correct.
Three new Members and thirteen new Associates were elected.
The election of one new Member and eleven new Associates of the
American Branch was recorded. Names and addresses are given
above.

The Council heard with regret of the decease of Mr. Joseph Kirk,
an Honorary Associate of the Society, who had contributed some
careful records of experimental work.

A record was made of the death of Dr. G. B. Ermacora, respecting
whom a notice appeared in the last number of the Journal,

The Council recorded with regret the death of Mr. R. Pearsall
Smith, who had been a Member of the Council for nearly ten years.

The Council also recorded with regret the death of the Right Hon.
W. E. Gladstone, who had been an Honorary Member of the Society
almost from its formation.

Several presents to the Library were on the table, for which a vote
of thanks was accorded to the donors.

isiis.) General Meeting. 247

Various other matters having been considered, the Council agreed
that its next meeting he held at the Westminster Town Hall, on
l-Yid.iy, .June iMth, at 3 p.m., previous to the General Meeting to be
la-Id on that day.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 93rd General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, May 20th, at 8.30 p.m.; PROFESSOR
II. SnxavicK in the chair.

The CHAIRMAN stated that Dr. C. Lloyd Tuckey, the author of the
tirst paper to be read, was unable to be present owing to the effects of
an accident.

Dr. Tuckey's paper entitled : " The Influence of Suggestion on
Health, with special Reference to ' Christian Science,' " was then read
by Mr. St George Lane Fox.

DR. TUCKEV explained that his excuse for bringing the subject
before the Society after the able and exhaustive manner in which it
had been handled by Mr. F. W. H. Myers and his brother the late Dr.
A. T. Myers (Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. IX.) was that he had had
considerable practical experience in the field of mental therapeutics
and also that much public interest had been recently taken in the
subject of so-called " Christian Science." The author then quoted
various passages from a book by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, entitled,
Science and Health, with the view of showing the ignorance and
absurdity involved in them. He also referred to widely advertised
quack nostrums, pills, electric belts, etc., and stated that cures never-
theless often occurred in connection witli such remedies after regular
practitioners had failed. The " curative force " in all these cases was
due to suggestion. It appeared from the statements made by Mrs.
Eddy that medical diagnosis was held by the " cult " to be a mis-
chievous error, tending only to produce disease, whereas nearly all the
greatest triumphs in therapeutics were due to progress in this direction.
Ihe author then dealt at length with the influence of suggestion in
both the production and the cure of disease, giving special atten-
tion to hypnotic suggestion. What was of value in " Christian
Science " was not new ; its novelty consisted in the addition of much
that was false or ridiculous ; and it was evident that there was a very
strong commercial spirit animating Mrs. Eddy herself.

The REV. FREDERIC MANN said that he sympathised with Dr.
Tuckey's criticism of the quackeries and other absurdities which in
many cases accompanied the promulgation of " Christian Science," but

248 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNE, 1898.

he thought that there might be some danger that, while we saw the
ludicrous aspects of certain cases, we might forsake the attitude of
calm judgment. We should be very tolerant, remembering that a
kind of healthy exaggeration was often attendant upon a presentation
of new thought, and he believed that there was in Christian Science a
new and powerful realisation of neglected truth, although an obstacle
in the way of its perception had been Mrs. Eddy's method of present-
ing its principles. What Dr. Tuckey had said so excellently concerning
the power of " suggestion " did not entirely cover the ground.
" Suggestion" was not a final explanation. The gap between thoughts
and the physical action of the brain molecules had not been bridged,
and the very facts cited regarding suggestion illustrated the power in
mind to control the operations of so-called " matter." Heresy was
often a half truth, and there was no dogma that did not contain some
truth, along, perhaps, with much obvious error. There was much
crudity in Christian Science, but to judge it fairly we must remember
that its outlook is taken from a high level of metaphysical thought,
quite apart from that of psychological experiment. Its presentations
of the ultimate facts of life might indeed be faulty and one-sided, but
viewing it as a reaction from materialism, arid from certain narrow
forms of theological dogma, we might hope for some useful synthetic
result. He bespoke a tolerance and a patience in trying to sift the
truth from a great deal that might seem erroneous and absurd.

THE LADY ISABKL MARGSSON said that the value of Christian Science
in England had been to show many persons the power that resided in
themselves of controlling their health, and to convince them that there
were spiritual realities behind matter. There were two special reasons,
however, for not accepting Mrs. Eddy as a teacher. (1) Mrs. Eddy
claimed wrongly that her teaching was new. (2) She claimed a
property in truth. As Emerson said, there was no property in truth.
It had always been held philosophically that we were more than we
seemed to be, more than material beings, and a merit of Christian
Science was that it led to the practical application of this. It was
metaphysics applied to daily life. She had known people who had been
ill and miserable, and who had been made strong and happy by the
influence of Christian Science in their own lives. Such results could
not be overlooked, and showed that there was a truth worthy of
consideration in the teaching that gave these people a spirit to triumph
over weaknesses to which they had previously yielded.

MR. J. G. SMITH then read a paper dealing with some cases which
had recently appeared in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, beginning
with a short account of two experiments with a French woman, named

Ji M:, IMIS ] / ,,s/v nments Alleged to Indicate Cerebral Force,etc. 249

Anna Brion, of Narbonne, in reading the contents of sealed envelopes,
— one conducted by Professor Grasset and the other by a committee of
the Acadt'mie des Sciences et Lettres of Montpellier. Photographs of
the envelope used in Professor Grasset's experiment were handed
round for inspection and Mr. Smith drew attention to indications in
the photographs that suggested fraudulent opening of the envelope.
In the second experiment, the committee concerned had themselves
MI posted grounds for concluding that fraud had been used.

Some cases of table turning, with the accompanying phenomena of
slate-writing communications from spirits, etc., recorded by M.
llonillon in the September-October, 1897, and January-February,
1898, numbers of the Annales des Sciences Psychiques were then read
and commented on. Criticism was directed chiefly to the incom-
pleteness of the evidence and to the absence of really test conditions.
Part of the paper was omitted for want of time.

(Only very brief abstracts of the papers are here given, as they will
appear later in the Proceedings.)

The meeting then adjourned.

REPORT ON INSTRUMENTS ALLEGED TO INDICATE

" CEREBRAL FORCE " AND THE « PSYCHIC ACTION

OF THE WILL."

Several forms of apparatus, including E. S. d'Odiardi's, Ditcham's,
etc., have been examined, all of which consist essentially of a light
body suspended in a glass bell jar by means of a silk or other fibre in
such a manner that a very slight force exerted upon it from one side
or other causes it to rotate about the point of suspension.

In the instruments inspected, the bodies suspended were made to
move by the approach of the whole body, by the hand alone or
other part of the human body, or by heated bodies, as a glass of hot
water. The air currents set up by the warmth or movement of the
whole body or the hand were quite sufficient to account for any
deflection that resulted in the suspended body.

That air currents were formed was clearly shown by means of
clouds of smoke. The approach of a slightly electrified object would,
of course, exert a certain amount of force upon the suspended body
and might induce some movement apart from air currents ; but there
was no evidence whatever of the exercise of any "psychic force." It
should be added that neither in the suspended body itself, nor in the

250 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNE, 1898.

method of suspension, was there anything in any way striking or
novel, or other than is perfectly familiar to every practical physicist.

These instruments do not contribute to our knowledge of " psychic
force," as it is obvious that in order to make any satisfactory test for
its presence the various forces well known to the physicist must be
eliminated altogether or duly accounted for in any experiment that is
made. The " inventors " of these " psychic " apparatus are evidently
quite ignorant of the methods of scientific research. The claims made
regarding d'Odiardi's instrument, in a book called Cheiro's Language
of the Hand, that the deflection of the suspended body is a means not
only of demonstrating the existence of " cerebral force " but of
registering its amount, are entirely without foundation ; and we warn
our readers against placing the slightest credence in the allegations
made by " Cheiro " and other persons that the instrument in question
records the action of forces other than those well known to physicists.

ST. GEORGE LANE Fox.
A. WALLACE, M.D.

CORRESPONDENCE.

\Tlie Editor is not responsible for opinions expressed by Correspondents.]

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF DYING.

(To tlie Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.)
Columbia College, New York, April Wth, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — I have often been puzzled by a phenomenon whose possible
explanation did not occur to me until recently. The phenomenon, or at
least apparent phenomenon, is the consciousness of dying, which many seem
to exhibit near the point of death. Whether there is evidence to suppose
any such consciousness (immediate consciousness), I shall consider further on.
I merely assume at present what many believe to be a fact, and what is often
remarked as a noticeable circumstance, however it be interpreted. From
the materialistic point of view it would seem difficult, if not impossible, to
account for such a phenomenon. Thus, if materialism be true, death must
be the extinction of consciousness. It would seem then to be impossible
ever to be conscious of dying ; that is, conscious that consciousness is being
extinguished. Consequently, materialism would seem to make impossible
the phenomenon which is at least an apparent fact.

The real difficulty is to find evidence to show that the supposition is a
fact. This may just as well be admitted. It is certain that we cannot
obtain the direct testimony of consciousness itself except on the condition
of dying ourselves. Hence whatever evidence we may claim to have must
be wholly inductive in its character. As a consequence of this the first step

must be the statement of a hypothetical r.-ist-, based upon what we know, or

niie that wo know, about materialism. This, in the Lucretian form at
least, in that consciousness is extinguished at death. This extinction can
i !>«• known by the subject of it. It might be inferred that the extinc-
tion is coming, but the immediate consciousness of such extinction would
indubitably appear to be a contradiction. Hence the only meaning that we
cot ild give to the expression, "conscious of dying," assuming that it is an
actual phenomenon of any significance at all, is that it represents, not the
consciousness of actual extinction, but the consciousness of mere separation
from corporeal embodiment. If, then, it be a fact, we should have a
phenomenon which is presumably impossible on the materialistic theory.
Consequently it might be of some interest to psychical research to investi-
gate whether any such phenomenon does occur.

I have stated the « firlori difficulty in supposing the fact, and this is the
circumstance that direct proof must be found in the experience of the indi-
vidual himself who is dying, and external observers can only conjecture the
condition of consciousness in the dying. But there is another difficulty.
( )ften enough a person fears that he is dying when he is not, and also we
often observe cases where persons evidently near death think that they are
dying, when, in fact, they may survive hours, days, weeks, or even recover
altogether. When, therefore, we measure such instances against those
which happen to be connected with actual death, we may raise the question
whether they are not after all merely inferences on the part of the decedent,
and not immediate cognitions at all. Then again, in favour of materialism
and against the hypothetical assumption here made, we have to meet the
allegation that we can be conscious of going to sleep, which on a materialistic
theory ought to be as impossible as any alleged consciousness of dying,
though the fact of going to sleep is perfectly consistent with materialism.
Hence, if I can be conscious of going to sleep, which may be only the
temporary suspension as death is the permanent suspension of conscious-
ness, wrhy not, the materialist will ask, may it be possible to be conscious
of dying '\ All these facts throw the burden of proof upon the anti-
materialist.

Now, while I shall not undertake to prove a case here, I may indicate
certain interesting facts, or possible facts, that might make it worth an
effort to study the cases where the consciousness of dying is alleged.

In the first place, it might be maintained that we are never conscious of
going to sleep. If this be a fact, it would appear to confirm the supposition
that we could not, on a materialistic theory, be conscious of dying. The
objection to the alleged fact that we are never conscious of going to sleep
would be that as a matter of certitude we often, some people perhaps
always, know when we are going to sleep. This is an experience which I
think no one can dispute. But its meaning is not so easy to determine. We
can as easily explain this alleged consciousness of going to sleep by calling
it an inference, as we can the alleged consciousness of dying. Consistency,
at least, requires us to apply the same principle to both instances. On the
materialistic theory both ought to be impossible, and, if apparent facts, must

252 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [.JUNE, 1898.

be inferences. Consequently no one can suppose that we are conscious of
going to sleep without admitting that we might be conscious of dying.
The doubt about the latter must apply also to the former, unless the con-
sciousness of dying be interpreted as mere departure from the organism.
But we are here considering the expression as standing for the suspension of
consciousness. Hence, if we were conscious of this suspension in one case
we ought to be so in the other, and the objections to both will be the same.
Now, on any theory, I think it impossible for consciousness to be immediately
aware of its own suspension. At least, I cannot see how any other view of
the case is possible. This, however, is a priori, and may be questioned on
that ground, though I think it a fairly certain assumption. That the cases
of alleged consciousness of going to sleep can be explained by inference is a
presumption that the position here taken is true, to say the least. At any
rate, as much proof is required to show that we can be conscious of going to
sleep as is needed to maintain that we can be conscious of extinction. When
it comes to facts I can say personally that I have never in my life been con-
scious of going to sleep. Like many or all others, I am able to tell when
sleep approaches, but it may be interesting to the reader to know that this is
not always the case. Only occasionally do I know anything of what is called
going to sleep, and by far the largest part of my life was spent up to the
present with the rarest consciousness of any signs of oncoming sleep, and I
believe the perfectly normal and healthy condition of life to be one in which
even the approach of sleep is either a rare or an improbable fact of conscious-
ness. I have found it only when I was unwell, or when there was a gradual
transition from extreme nervous wakefulness, in which I was able to notice
my thoughts wandering. This I inferred to indicate the approach of sleep.
But in all other conditions, sleep has come with the suddenness and ignorance
that we should expect in the suspension of consciousness. I have been able
to discover no traces of an immediate knowledge of this suspension. Only
a few indications even of its approach are accessible. They are a physical
sensation of weariness, the dropping of the eyelids, the wandering of my
thoughts, and the discovery, when reading, that my memory has little
tenacity. I do not observe all of these signs on every occasion. The most
frequent one is the physical sensation, perhaps combined with the dropping
of the eyelids. The detection of wandering thoughts is very rare, and has
occurred only within the last two years. No experiences in hearing, taste,
or smell have ever been remarked as similar signs. Often, howerer, not one
of these indications is present. Sleep comes without warning, and there is
not the slightest suggestion of its approach or inception. If, then, I may
take such facts as typical of what we generally call the consciousness of
going to sleep, we have an explanation that accords with the judgment that
consciousness cannot be aware of its own suspension. This conclusion, we
have found, applies equally to the phenomenon of death, considered as
extinction. But what if we should ascertain evidence to make it probable,
in some instances at least, that persons are conscious of dying, immediately
conscious of a fact that shows no distinct traces of inference in it ? Would
we not have a fact in such a case which suggests the survival of consciousness

is: is.] 253

apart from tin- organism rather than its i-xtinction, the consciousness of
which must bo impossible unless wo change our conception of the postulates
of materialism '.

In answering this question, I shall freely admit that direct proof of
anything but inference in alleged cases of the consciousness of dying is not
possible. But we sometimes hear of cases that suggest that interpretation
and it only remains to investigate such in order to ascertain more about
them. The phenomenon is often enough remarked in a way that indicates
surprise and that the very opposite would be expected. I can report none,
however, that have any scientific weight. They are mostly such as appear in
t lie talk of friends, and generally without the care in observation that is
necessary to make instances of the kind strongly suggestive. More striking
are cases where the person seems to suddenly discover approaching death and
shows a calmness that is not usual in regard to it. I cannot detail any
instances of this, though I have heard one very remarkable case narrated.
The moral courage of the decedent, however, must be reckoned with in
making up our judgment. But I know one instance that has a few features
worth recording. I helped to nurse a man during the last week of his life,
and had an excellent opportunity to observe all the symptoms of death. The
case was one in which the man had been an invalid for thirty years, though
the constitution was most excellent in every particular except for the
affliction of locomotor ataxy. There was a slight attack of apoplexy twenty
years before death. About two years before death paralysis of the larynx
occurred, and after a time something like cancer of the larynx. But
digestion remained unimpaired until two months before death. On the
patient's deathbed there were several suffocating spells caused by spasms of
the larynx. But these decreased in intensity as death approached, and
there was not the slightest trace of them during the last forty-eight
hours. In these struggles there were the most evident indications that
the patient expected death to ensue, but they were as evidently inferential
in their nature. The patient showed great willingness to have the pulse
examined and to receive that attention which was due to him in the
circumstances. Knowing that he could not recover he often felt his own
pulse, which kept in very good condition until a few hours before death.
Delirium appeared only once or twice, and only for a short time, during the
last two days of life. The voice, only a loud whisper at any time, became
weaker. But until within a very short time before death there was the usual
willingness to have all necessary examinations made of the pulse and other
symptoms of his condition. During the last night there was evidently much
pain or discomfort, though endured without murmuring, and consciousness
was not clear. There were periods of stupor and fitful sleep, interrupted by
frequent requests to be turned over and expressions of pain. But in the
morning about two hours before death this fitfulness passed away and
consciousness became much clearer. The hunger, which is so often the
messenger of death, appeared, but the muscles of the throat would permit
only a partial satisfaction, and the patient lay back with a distinct conscious-
ness of his weakness. It was evident to those at his side- that the end was

254 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNE, 1898.

near, though the pulse indicated it less than the general weakness. But half
an hour before the end the patient seemed to show decided distaste to the
examination of his pulse, and pulled his hand away from mine with some
impatience. Several times he pressed the hand of his wife in indication of
the end. There was much struggling to get breath, though it did not show any
muscular expression of either pain or alarm that had accompanied the spasms
of the larynx. Though not at all so distinct as might be desirable, the
indications that the patient was conscious of dying were tolerably apparent.
The recovery of a clearer consciousness in the morning before death, the
unusual and impatient dislike of having the pulse examined, and the signs
to his wife which had not been given during the severer spasms, were
all suggestive, even if they were not decisive, of the consciousness of
dying.

I do not pretend here to have produced anything like proof of such
consciousness, but only a case where I was able to observe the phenomena
connected with deatli a little more carefully than is usual, and there are, as
we see, some indications that there was a consciousness of the situation
which might not have been suspected. It is only a suggestion that such
circumstances ought to be studied more than they are if we are to have a
better knowledge of their nature and meaning. There is an a priori fact
possibly bearing upon such cases, suggesting their genuineness and signifi-
cance. It is that inference is usually, if not always, in normal life, connected
itrith some previous experience which has had the meaning inferred in the new
case. But as the subject has had no experience involving the connection of-
a sensation with death, it would appear remarkable that it should infer a fact
which is interpreted as extinction, an experience which it has not had. A
new experience of an extraordinary kind might, of course, suggest death as
its explanation, though it might equally suggest mere wonder at its newness
as strange sensations often do. In normal life variations from usual
sensations awaken curiosity and do not always suggest the approach of death.
Hence the question here is an open one. If the subject had had any
experience which it knew meant death, then the consciousness of dying
could easily be explained. But the absence of such experience leaves the
question open to investigation in spite of anything that we can consider
probable in it. That the explanation, in the consciousness of the subject
having the experience, takes the form of supposing the approach of death,
might be suggested by the a priori conception of death as the departure of the
soul from the body, which a long religious teaching has made general. Hence,
as the meaning inferred in such supposed cases is wholly new, assuming
that it is an inference, we can wonder why the object of it should be death,
this not being the invariable accompaniment of new sensations, unless it be
the discovery by the subject that the experience conforms to the religious
belief or conception that death is not the extinction but the severance of
consciousness from the body. In this view of it we should have inference,
nit more than inference at the same time. Besides interpretation we should
c ve the immediate realisation of a fact that might have much importance
we not ,v,e SUppOSition of extinction.

.i i M-. 1898.] Correspondence. 255

1 am not stating a conviction but a problem, which can be investigated,
only by inductive methods of course, but yet conceivably open to intelligent
conviction one way or the other. In conceiving the consciousness of death
as possibly more than an inference, I do not intend to imply that it should
be a frequent phenomenon. On the contrary, it may be as rare as you
please to consider it. If we interpret sleep as the suspension of conscious-
ness, as I think we must do, under any theory whatever, then it would be
quite probable, even supposing the persistence of the subject after death,
that this suspension would generally, if not always, take place at death, per-
manently, of course, on the theory of materialism, but temporarily, at least,
on the opposing theory. But there might be exceptions to this suspension
at the moment of decease, if death is not extinction. There might be cases
where the subject retains consciousness of the severance, similar to those
experiences on record in which the person says that he has seemed to leave
the body. It is simply a question of evidence, whether we can determine
the probabilities of such a consciousness or whether we find the facts either
without significance or disproving the hypothesis. If we find phenomena,
normal or abnormal, in the experience of the living and resembling what we
might imagine to be at least an occasional phenomenon of the dying, we
should give the problem the attention it deserves, and endeavour to ascer-
tain whether the so-called consciousness of dying is anything more than an
inference, or like those apprehensions about death that are often illusions. —
Very sincerely,

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

Professor Hyslop adds, in a letter of April 24th, 1898 : —
Since mailing you my letter on the possible significance of the alleged
consciousness of dying, I yesterday came across an interesting little book,
called X Rays, by Gail Hamilton, whom I think most people in the world of
letters well know. It contains quite a number of just such cases as I had in
mind. They, of course, are not so well authenticated as one would like to
see them, but there is some care in the selection and description of them.
They suggest very clearly the conception of the phenomenon I was discuss-
ing and confirm the possibility that an investigation of such instances might
exhibit some very interesting results.

SPIRITUALISM AND SPIRIT IDENTITY.

Judging by the two letters in the last Journal, it is evident that I have
not yet succeeded in expressing myself in a convincing manner. The position
which I am endeavouring to maintain may nevertheless be a sound one.
The exposition is not always worthy of the cause. I think, however, that
both Mr. Schiller and Dr. Hodgson have shown some ingenuity in missing
the point ; their remarks, moreover, would seem to suggest that ho one who
is not prepared to give a simple, complete, and final explanation of all the
mysteries of individuality and self-consciousness can have any title to make
an attempt at the work of their elucidation ! The origin of this discussion

256 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNK, 1898.

is simply this : I had noticed what appeared to be an obvious error in the
prevailing method of dealing with psychic phenomena, and it occurred to
me that by helping to remove it a step would be taken in the right direction.
Mr. Schiller is quite wrong in saying that I studiously evade what he calls
the "main point," viz., the question "whether 'spirit' phenomena justify
us in attributing them to persons in the same way as we recognise the
2^ersona lily of our fellow men." I had merely failed to discover its impor-
tance. The answer to this " main point" must surely depend upon who is
meant by "we." The sense of the term personality is ambiguous, its uses
being various and vague ; but they are all for the most part associated with
familiar mundane experiences, necessarily limited by our bodily conditions,
so that the ideas underlying them could rarely be said to have any perma-
nent value in determining the fundamental meaning of individuality, when
and where these conditions no longer obtain. The great aim of Psychical
Research, as I understand the matter, is the correction and expansion of
prevailing beliefs concerning life and its phenomena. Now the main obstacle
that confronts us at the outset is the difficulty of language ; and it was for
this reason that I ventured to make a protest against the improper use that
was being made of the word spirit. In common language the word has a
well-ascertained meaning, and I humbly urge that this should be adhered to.
We all know what is meant when we speak of an individual being animated
by the spirit of love, or that it is the determining factor of certain thoughts,
feelings, and actions ; but it would be difficult to know what is intended
when some one begins to talk of "a spirit" going about by itself like a
balloon and occupying the body of a medium, or becoming visible by
"materialisation." I also ventured to protest against the ideas of per-
manence or immutability being applied to individuality. Nothing can be
really permanent but truth. Individual life necessarily involves change,
either development or decay in the process of evolution.

A comprehensive theory covering all the phenomena of self-consciousness,
memory, and spiritual evolution, cannot reasonably be demanded of me
merely because I have endeavoured to point out what, in all sincerity, I
regard as a grievous source of error in the treatment of these questions. If,
however, I am not trespassing too much on your space I should be glad to
be allowed to offer a few remarks by way of indicating the direction in which
I believe the truth is to be found. First, then, I hold that a critical exami-
nation of our mental states, by the systematic and vigorous exercise of the
faculties of thought and memory, will lead to the abandonment of the belief
in a permanent self or ego ; and to the realisation of the fact that the ego is
no more than a transitory polarisation of feelings, tastes, and desires ; that
although connected by memory the ego of one mental state is not the ego of
another ; that in proportion as the mind becomes enlightened, and becomes
a true vehicle of truth, so it becomes less egotistical and loses in degree the
essentials of personality, or, in other words, it becomes relatively freed from
the false sense of isolation, greed, bigotry, vanity, hate, and lust. Thus the
progress of the mind towards truth involves the gradual abandonment of the
ideas and feelings of an absolutely separate self, and the development of a

JUNE, 18!>8.] Correspondence. 257

happy disposition, which manifests love, sympathy, kindness, charity,
forbearance, and all the virtues. The growth of the mind in this direction
might well be described as its progress in spirituality, for with it spring into
activity fresh mental energies, new and keener faculties, deeper and more
far-reaching than before.

It is often asked what practical outcome has resulted from the work of
the Society for Psychical Research ? To this I would reply that its inquiries
and discussions have done much towards the establishment of the doctrine,
given such eloquent expression to by Mr. Myers, that the discovery of truth
is practically synonymous with the development of faculty ; or, in other
words, that the growth of knowledge depends upon the organised extension
of the threshold of sensibility to wider regions of understanding and ex-
perience.

ST. G. LANE Fox.

(To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.)

Being in some sympathy with what I suppose to be the main intention of
Mr. St. George Lane Fox's protest against the popular use of the terms
" Spirit," " Spiritualism," etc., I should like to be allowed to take part in
the discussion which his letter in the February Journal has elicited.

" Spiritualism " properly and primarily signifies a philosophical tendency
of thought, or Welt-Anschauung, opposed to the materialistic tendency, and
to Pantheistic systems which subordinate conscious intelligence to nature.
The philosophical sense has thus a recognisable, if remote, affinity to the
secondary, special and empirical sense which the term has acquired in con-
nection with phenomenal evidence that consciousness is not an accident of
physical organisation. Thus, too, one may be a " Spiritualist " in that
secondary sense without believing in the perpetuation of the Ego-conscious-
ness on an identifiable line of level continuity. I accept the designation
myself, though in my long association with the subject I have never con-
cealed my inability to get determinately much beyond Mr. Lane Fox's
proposition (Journal, p. 185), that "there is probably" [I should say,
certainly] "some definite though transcendental connection between some
of the phenomena exhibited and the past or even future life of the
individual persons concerned." (I do not adopt this as the most satisfactory
formula for the result of the experience in question, but for the present
purpose it will serve.)

The motive of Mr. Lane Fox's letter appears to be contempt for what,
many years ago, in addressing my friends the Spiritualists themselves, I
ventured to call "a bourgeois conception of immortality." But he seems to
me to confuse what he describes as the " theory " of Spiritualists with their
evidence. And, perhaps, I need hardly follow your correspondent, Mrs.
Browne (Journal, March), in protesting against the ridiculous phrase, "a
lump of spirit in human form," as at all applicable to any conception ever
entertained by Spiritualists, of the " bearer " of posthumous consciousness.
The fact is they have simply used the expression "a spirit" to signify the

258 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNE, 1898.

concrete unity of personality and form, just as everyone uses the expression
"a man." The doctrine of the "vehicles" (o^/iara), gross and subtle,
is of the most ancient and respectable authority, as may be seen by reference
to the citations in the 2nd Volume of Cudworth's Intellectual System of tJie
Universe, to say nothing of the "vestures" enumerated in the Upanishads,
nor of St. Paul. Mr. Lane Fox knows all that as well as anyone, and I
think he ought to have known that the terminology of the modern " Spirit-
ualist " is simply taken over, if uncritically, from a traditional use. Nor is
the term "spirit " or " a spirit " quite indefensible, when understood, as it
is or should be, as simply relative to our present sense objectivity — not in
antithesis to corporeity in general. If, however, Mr. Lane Fox's objection
to the word " spirit " extends to its identification with self-conscious intelli-
gence, he stands before us as the critic of Hegel and other great lights of
modern philosophy, and no longer as just the superior person before whom
the poor empirical Spiritualist must quail. And if, on the metaphysical
question of individuality, he really imagined that he had only this despised
opponent to encounter, the letters of Mr. Schiller will have convinced him
of his mistake.

Nevertheless, it is quite possible for an Idealist and a Spiritualist, both
which I profess myself to be, to sympathise with Mr. Lane Fox, (1) in not
believing, or desiring to believe, in the perpetuation of the Ego-conscious-
ness as now determined, out of the conditions of such determination, (2) in
declining to accept the best evidence of "spirit-identity" as proof of a
permanent continuity or sequence in the conditioning of personal conscious-
ness as now known to us. Depending upon phenomenal evidence, we
cannot, I have long been convinced, get beyond the conception which the
French Positivist, M. D'Assier, presents in his interesting book, L'Hnmanite
Posthume, (Paris, 1883), of a temporary animal survival associated with a
retreating psychical consciousness, and a disintegrating memory. This is
what we should expect from failure of regular organic relation with the
world of our past experience and interests. It is in agreement with nearly,
if not quite, all the indisputable evidence of outside intelligence in the
communications, which show a greater frequency, animation, and coherence
in the case of the recently, and especially of the prematurely, deceased, and
also a usual failure to react connectedly and lucidly upon questions
addressed by ourselves, however perfect the "control" may apparently
be. That view is also in accordance with a universal analogy, that of
the alternation of states of externality and internality, or of manifestion and
occultation ; out-breathing and in-breathing. It is the law throughout all
the life and nature whose cycles we know : it is observed in respiration, in
vegetation, in the day, in the year, in that smaller cycle within our own
organic period, its waking and sleeping states. If we believe in a deep root
of individuality, its larger cycle of expression and indrawal, of organic
renewals and periods of subjective rest and assimilation, is a hypothesis so
natural— not to say of such wide and ancient prevalence — that we in this
Society should surely ask if there is anything in the experience we study con-
formable to it. And at least I think we discover a significant extension of

1898.] Obifiun-i/. 259

the analogy. For the communications which we can best associate with the
personalities of the deceased have, or soon acquire, a character suggestive of
that intermediate condition between waking and sleep which varies so much
nnd so often in duration, and in the degree of surviving lucidity.

One word more. The rejection of individuality by essentially ethical
thinkers like Mr. Lane Fox presupposes the common form of the conception,
which is that of an abstract monadism or unatoned (unintegrated) pluralism.
If, on the other hand, we conceive individuality according to the analogy of
the cellular constituents of an organism, it will be seen that relativity, not
«xtinction or absorption, is the true ideal. As the particular self recognises
its universal truth, the tendency must be more and more to realise that truth
in universal relation and reciprocity of influence, exclusive egotism becoming
impossible in the plenitude of harmonious consciousness, and particularity
being felt only as a basis of reception and reaction, mediating distribution.
But the absolute negation of the individual is negation of the universe.

C. C. MASSEY.

THE DIVINING ROD — To AMERICAN MEMBERS.
(To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.)

Vale Lodge, Hampstead Heath, London, N.W.

SIR, — Though the atmosphere of the States has probably been uncongenial
to the practice of the divining rod and its record, I think it likely that more
notices of it exist than I have yet succeeded in including in our forthcoming
bibliography of the subject. I shall therefore be glad if our American
members will put me in the way of getting references, other than those in
.Poole's Index and in the American Journal of Folk-Lore. The rod has
doubtless been used in the States from colonial times, but at present I have
no references to its use there earlier than the present century.

E. WESTLAKE.

OBITUARY.

R. PEARSALL SMITH.

Mr. R. Pearsall Smith, Member of Council S.P.R., died on April
17th last, and I wish to add my own personal expression of regret to
that recorded at the Council Meeting.

It was at Mr. Smith's home in Philadelphia that the first Com-
mittee Meeting was held, under the auspices of Professor Barrett, that
afterwards resulted in the formation of an American Society for
Psychical Research ; and when, later, the American Society was
actually established in Boston, he was a Member of its first Council,
appointed at the end of 1884, and he rendered the most valuable

260 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JUNE, 1898.

assistance by his counsels and active co-operation. During the last
ten years Mr. Smith resided chiefly in England, but he continued to
maintain a warm interest in the American Society, even after it ceased
to be an independent Society in January, 1890, and became a Branch
of the parent S.P.R. ; he gave generous financial aid to it not only at
the time of its origin, but at later periods also, and was ever ready
with the fullest sympathetic encouragement for our work.

R. H.

THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.

Mr. Gladstone's relation to Psychical Research affords one more
illustration of the width and force of his intellectual sympathies.
Many men, even of high ability, if convinced as Mr. Gladstone was of
the truth and sufficiency of the Christian revelation, permit themselves
to ignore these experimental approaches to spiritual knowledge, as at
best superfluous. They do not realise how profoundly the evidence,
the knowledge, which we seek and which in some measure we find,
must ultimately influence men's views as to both the credibility and
the adequacy of all forms of faith. Mr. Gladstone's broad intellectual
purview, — aided perhaps in this instance by something of the practical
foresight of the statesman, — placed him in a quite different attitude
towards our quest. " It is the most important work which is being
done in the world," he said in a conversation in 1885. "By far the
most important," he repeated, with a grave emphasis which suggested
previous trains of thought, to which he did not care to give expression.
He went on to apologise, in his courteous fashion, for his inability
to render active help ; and ended by saying, " If you will accept
sympathy without service, I shall be glad to join your ranks." He
became an Honorary Member, and followed with attention, — I know
not with how much of study, — the successive issues of our Proceedings.
Towards the close of his life he desired that the Proceedings should be
sent to St. Deiniol's Library, which he had founded at Hawarden ; —
thus giving final testimony to his sense of the salutary nature of our
work. From a man so immersed in other thought and labour that
work could assuredly claim no more ; from men profoundly and
primarily interested in the spiritual world it ought, I think, to claim
no less.

F. W. H. M.

No. CLI.-VoL. VIII. JULY, 1898.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Associates 261

Meeting of the Council 261

General Meeting 262

Psychical Heredity 264

Correspondence : —

" Faces in the Dark" 269

The Knockings at Long Wittenham 272

The Consciousness of Dying 272

Spiritualism and Spirit Identity 273

Cases . 277

NEW ASSOCIATES.

ADKINS, HENRY, J.P., Leyhill, Northfield, near Birmingham.
COLLIER, MRS., St. Mary's Entry, Oxford.

"CURTOIS, Miss MARGARET A., 11, Barton-street, Westminster, S.W.
ELLIOT, GILBERT, Tednambury, by Bishops Stortford, Herts.
LETHBRIDGE, ALAN B., 26, Oxford-terrace, Hyde Park, London, W.
PATTERSON, C. B., 19, West 31st-street, New York, U.S.A.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

BAYLEY, WESTON D., M.D., S.E. cor. 15th & Poplar-sts., Philadelphia, Pa.

COMPTON, PROFESSOR ELIAS, University of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio.

KINGSBURY, HON. B. B., Defiance, Ohio.

PITMAN, STEPHEN M., Way land-avenue, Providence, R.I.

SEABURY, MRS. CLARA E., 139, West 72nd-street, New York, N.Y.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held at the Westminster Town
Hall, on June 24th. Professor W. F. Barrett was voted to the chair.
There were also present Dr. R. Hodgson, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, Dr.
G. F. Rogers, Mr. Sydney C. Scott, Mr. H. Arthur Smith, and Dr. A.
Wallace.

262 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1898.

The minutes of last meeting were read and signed as correct.

Six new Associates were elected ; and the election of five new
Associates of the American Branch was recorded. Names and
addresses are given above.

At his request, the name of Professor A. P. Chattock was trans-
ferred from the List of Associates to that of Life Associates, he having
qualified accordingly.

A present to the Library was reported, for which a vote of thanks
was accorded to the donor.

The Council accepted with thanks an offer made by Mr. Michael
Petrovo-Solovovo, of St. Petersburg, to act as the Honorary Secretary
of the Society for Russia.

It was agreed that General Meetings be held at the Westminster
Town Hall, on the following dates : — Friday, November 4th, 8.30p.m.,
Friday, December 9th, 4 p.m., and Friday, January 27th, 1899, 4 p.m.

Several other matters having been disposed of, the Council agreed
that its next meeting should be on Friday, October 7th, at 4.30 p.m.,
at 19, Buckingham Street, W.C.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 94th General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, June 24th, at 4 p.m.; MR. F. W.
H. MYERS in the chair.

PROFESSOR W. F. BARRETT gave an address, " A Second Report on
the So-called Divining Rod," the paper being a sequel to the Report
published in Part XXXII. Proceedings S.P.R.

PROFESSOR BARRETT stated that, after the lengthy report recently
published on the divining rod, some surprise might be felt that this
subject should again occupy the attention of the Society, the more so
as it was a question which, at first sight, seemed unworthy of serious
and prolonged inquiry. This view was, however, a superficial one, for
those who might have read the previous report would have recognised
that whilst many of the pretensions of the " dowser " or water-finder
were absurd, there remained a considerable body of well-attested
evidence 011 behalf of the real practical value of dowsing for under-
ground water. The lecturer was glad to find this opinion shared by so
able a geologist as Mr. T. V. Holmes, F.G S. (ex-president of the London
Geological Association), who had recently published a paper on the
divining rod, and to whom Professor Barrett expressed his indebtedness

JULY, isys.l General Meeting. 263

for many suggestive geological criticisms of the cases recorded in the
previous report. Professor Barrett also acknowledged the great assist-
ance he had received from Mr. E. Westlake, F.G.S., who had visited,
and carefully examined from a geological point of view, numerous
places where the dowser appeared to have succeeded after other previous
attempts to find water had failed. These criticisms and inquiries had
undoubtedly diminished the surprise with which some of the successes
of the dowser were viewed by unscientific witnesses ; on the other hand
closer investigation had shown that there were a certain number of out-
standing cases which could only be described as inexplicable from
any ordinary scientific standpoint. These cases, such as the " Water-
ford case " in the last report, and others to be described in
the present Report, could not be explained away by any shrewd-
ness, or surface indications of underground water, affording the
requisite information to the dowser. Whether the number of
such outstanding cases was much beyond what might fairly be
attributed to chance coincidence was the question that remained to
be decided. Professor Barrett was of opinion that the view which he
had expressed in his previous report in favour of what might provi-
sionally be called a " dowsing faculty " was supported by more recent
inquiries. At the same time he pointed out that this faculty appeared
to be a rare one, and he expressed a doubt whether many of the
professional dowsers now living could lay claim to it.

The mere fact of the apparently spontaneous motion of a forked
twig in the hands of certain persons was no proof of the possession of
such a faculty, since the divining rod would work in the hands of
nearly everyone if certain rules be followed. The motion of the rod
was simply due to unconscious muscular action on the part of the
dowser, a fact which Professor Barrett had been able conclusively to
establish through the assistance of Professor Purser, M.D., the
distinguished professor of Physiology in Trinity College, Dublin.
The rod was merely a convenient index of a sub-conscious impression
on the part of the dowser. The lecturer then pointed out that there
were cogent -reasons why the source of this impression must be
sought for not in the physical but in the psychical world, and that if a
dowsing faculty existed it would probably be found correlated to other
psychical phenomena which must eventually force themselves upon the
attention of scientific men.

Professor Barrett then referred to the evidence on behalf of the
use of the rod in the search for underground metallic veins and
recounted the numerous other uses to which the divining rod had been

applied during the past four centuries. He then briefly sketftned ^he

^ "fcrw ^>>

264 Journal of Society for Psychical Research- [JULY, 1898.

history of the modern dowsing rod. A detailed report would be given
later in the Proceedings, together with a voluminous and admirable
biography of the rod, which had been prepared by Mr. E. Westlake.
A number of lantern slides, illustrating the past history and use of the
rod, were thrown on the screen in the course of Professor Barrett's
address.

MR. J. F. YOUNG, an amateur " dowser," illustrated the different
methods known to him of holding the divining rod, and replied to
various questions, explaining that for the last four or five years he had
found it at least equally serviceable to hold his hands extended some-
what in front of him, without holding a rod at all. Water was
indicated by a curious sensation in his hands, somewhat like that pro-
duced by a small induction coil. He used also a small forked aluminium
wire, holding the end between finger and thumb. He said that this
rotated, and he was unable to explain its rotation by muscular action,
although he believed generally that the movements of the rod were
due to the unconscious muscular action of the operator.

The meeting then adjourned.

PSYCHICAL HEREDITY.

The following narrative has been recently written by a gentleman
well-known to me, an active clergyman of the Church of England.
Of his good faith there can be no doubt, and the narrative may, I
believe, be regarded as substantially accurate ; indeed tliere are about
it no features which we can consider extraordinary, but it suggests the
desirability of keeping complete family records and of subsequently
having them collated to see if the inheritance of psychical faculty
follows laws akin to those of colour blindness, arithmetical or musical
genius, and other slight abnormalities. OLIVER LODGE.

THREE GENERATIONS OF PSYCHICAL FACULTY.

My father was born in 1790, and lived during the early years of his life
under the strong emotional influences of early Methodism. He saw
" ghosts," or, at least, he thought he did, which, as far as he was concerned,
means the same thing.

When I was seventeen, he took me into Yorkshire to see the scene of his
most vivid experience of this sort.

A large house stood back at some distance from the high road in an
extensive park. A carriage drive led from the house to the road, which it
cut at right angles. My father described to me with precise detail, how at

JULY, 185)8.] Psychical Heredity. 265

my age lie was returning home one night, the moon being at the full, when,
on passim; tliis avenue, he was surprised to see a horse and rider galloping
towards liim through the park at a great pace. Curiosity prompted him to
stand aside and seo who it was. As the horse issued from the gate, he saw
that a lady was seated on the pillion behind the rider, very pale and sad, and
he recognised her us the lady of the mansion hard by. Then he said fear
succeeded to wonder, when, instead of turning to right or left along the
highway, the horse appeared to gallop forward in air across the hedge on the
other side of the road and so in time became lost to view. He hurried home
to relate his adventure, and next morning heard the news, that the previous
evening the lady had died in giving birth to her first child.

From his first experience I will pass to his last. Before he married my
mother, a rich widow, who was a very intimate friend, proposed to him, but
he declined the suggestion. When his first daughter was born, this lady
begged him to have no anxiety as to her future, as she should regard it as
her privilege to provide for her. The girl practically became her child,
spent most of her time with her, and was always taught by her adopted
mother that she would inherit a fortune.

I well remember my father coming down to breakfast one morning looking
haggard and anxious. Upon being pressed as to the cause, he said that in
the early morning hours he had distinctly seen Mrs. X. standing by his
bedside with signs of agonizing distress, which he could only interpret as
assertive of innocence about something, and deprecatory of his displeasure.
He insisted on starting at once to visit her, but, before he could do so, news
came of her death. He went to the funeral and heard the will read, which
contained no allusion whatever to my sister. The will was a very old one,
and left everything to a relative, who had the custody of it. We have long
known that the codicil in favor of my sister was destroyed by this relative,
but, as my sister died a few months after her godmother, no steps were
ever taken to secure legal proof of the crime.

These two instances of my father's idiosyncrasy must suffice. I have
often heard him say, that his ghostly experiences gave him no fear, and
that nothing would afford him more pleasure than an interview with the
spirit of a departed friend. I have known him walk for hours in the deepest
darkness of the remote country in the hope of an encounter with some
visitant from the spirit state. Moreover, he would derive the strongest
intuitions from dreams and voices, which he said were inaudible to the ear,
but curiously articulate to his consciousness. As an example of the former,
he came down one cloudless morning in June and incongruously begged my
mother to have an early lunch, saying that there was going to be a fearful
thunderstorm, and he should not like to have steel articles lying about. He
then wont on to describe how he had dreamt of such a storm, how a globe
of fire had seemed to enter the room, and a stack of chimneys at the old
manor house across the way had been simultaneously knocked down.
Certain it is, that everything happened precisely as he had dreamt it, though
the storm came on so suddenly, that at the beginning of lunch my mother
had chaffed him by pointing to the still cloudless sky and asking him what

266 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1898.

had become of his dream ! Twenty minutes later the ball of fire had
blinded them and the manor house chimneys had fallen.

As to the voices, he always had an outdoor oratory, consisting of a plain
wooden chair, against which he knelt on the ground in some secluded bit of
the boscage. A favourite little daughter was seized with diphtheria in the
first year of its appearance, and from the first moment he said she would die.
His oracle always answered, "What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou
shalt know hereafter."

Shortly afterwards I lay at death's door with typhoid, and was given up
by my doctors. But he was always cheerful and confident, as his oracle
persistently assured him : "Thy son liveth." I must in justice add, that a
more practical man than my father could nowhere be found. His whole life
was spent in vigorous activities, and his psychical other-world experiences
happened in the ordinary course of things. I remember how they used to
seem to him natural incidents in his career. It would never have occurred
to him to publish them.

Now I must ask your patience while I recount to you some symptoms of
the form in which I think my father's temperament has descended to me.

I squirm at the bare idea of a ghost ; I hate the dark ; I dislike every-
thing connected with death ; I scoff at dreams and intuitions ; and yet I
have had some experiences which I attribute to heredity and which are, to
say the least, coincidences worth recital.

The first I can remember had to do with my father. On October 25th,
1865, I was reading hard for my tripos in the following March in my college
rooms at Cambridge. I always worked until midnight. That evening I
suddenly became aware of an appalling fear, so strange and weird that it
drove me from my room to seek the companionship of a man opposite. I
looked at my watch as I hurried out of the room, and saw that it was five
minutes to twelve. My neighbour exclaimed, on seeing me enter, "How
pale you look ! You might have seen a ghost." I had no thought of ghosts,
and only wondered what had really happened to me. I refused pipe and
drink, and said I only wanted to be with someone for a few minutes. In a
very short time the incredible oppression passed. I felt quite well again,
and went off to bed, laughing at my own absurdity. I noticed that it was
just after twelve by his mantel clock. I awoke in the morning perfectly
fit, and read hard at Pindar until about eleven, when I heard a knocking
at my door. Enough to say, it was a brother-in-law, who had hastened
up to break the news that my father had been seized with acute angina
at five minutes to twelve the previous night, and was a corpse at twelve
o'clock, the times exactly coinciding with my sense of horror and experience
of relief.*

* During the brief attack his mind was so alive and active, that he was able to
indicate where a considerable sum of money was concealed, and to show the deepest
interest in the members of his family who were present. This may in some sort
answer the objection, that the mind becomes too feeble on the approach of death to
make itself felt at a distance, assuming such a phenomenon to be ever possible.

JI-I.Y, 1898.] Psychical Heredity. 267

Some years elapsed before my attention was drawn by a cognate experi-
ence to some peculiarity in my own constitution. I had a godmother,
between whom and me there had existed for many years the tenderest
affection. So marked was her regard for me, that her children, much older
than myself, showed some little jealousy, as I thought at that time, and
put difficulties in the way of my seeing her. This led to my saying one
day, that were I a thousand miles away at her death, I would stand at
her grave, if it were possible to do so. This pleased her, and she said if
she could help me to do so she would. I did stand by her grave, and
it fell out in the most incalculable and involuntary way. I was then
rector of a church in A, and on a certain Monday in July, 187-, with

my wife, was taking a large congregational party to C . As this

was half way to B, where my old godmother lived, I determined to quit
the party in the evening and go on to see her, taking with me a small bag of
requisites for the night. But on returning to the station at C, I suddenly
changed my intention and went back to A, for which I had to face a good
deal of chaff for my inexplicable irresolution. I could give no reason ; I
only knew that I felt an indescribable barrier between me and my journey.
For no special reason I fixed the following Wednesday for the journey, and
in the evening reached the house of our family lawyer, with whom I had
some business and was to stay. Almost his first words were, "I suppose
you have heard of the death of Mrs. H. She died on Monday afternoon."
I said to him, "Then I shall be able to fulfil a wish and be at her funeral."
"No," he said, "not unless you can spare a Sunday, as she is not to be
buried until Monday. Her son has some extraordinary notions on the sub-
ject." Not to weary you with details, a curious chain of incidents, which
seemed to be a series of annoying contretemps at the moment, brought me
next day, Thursday, to my godmother's house in the suburbs five minutes
before the funeral started for the churchyard across the road. In fact, had
I planned the whole thing with the utmost precision, I could not have
accomplished my purpose with more complete accuracy. It was not one
coincidence, but many, which have to be accounted for in this unique
episode. First there was my own unaccountable change of purpose on the
Monday, my equally unaccountable choice of Wednesday for my journey,
the alteration of the day of burial to Thursday instead of the following
Monday, and then the catena of circumstances which brought me to the
door just as the funeral was being marshalled. Since then, one of the
most marked features in my life has been the frequency of similar coin-
cidences, which possibly might be accounted for on the theory of some
co-ordination of my nervous system with that of the other person concerned.
It is also worth adding, that I generally seem to be the recipient and not the
sender of any such intelligence, and that I appear to be in that receptive
condition only at times when rny nerves are a little overwrought. These
curious experiences generally occur in groups, and are simultaneous with the
close of a period of excessive mental activity. A very singular one occurred
last January, when I went to D with my wife for a few days' quiet. While
there, I remembered that E was in the neighbourhood, where I had a

268 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1898.

cousin residing, a brother of a distinguished artist, and that he had written
to me some time before about a picture of his brother's, which he wanted
to sell. I at once resolved to ride over next morning. Upon inquiry
from the manager of the hotel, I learnt that the road was bad, the weather
unpromising, other directions more interesting. But I stuck to my purpose
and went, though the road was atrocious, and, within three or four miles of
my goal, I was so dead beat that I almost turned back.

However, I reasoned with myself, that I might perhaps never have the
chance of seeing my cousin again, and that I might even find him in some
great need of my help. 1 continued my journey, found out his cottage, and
knocked at the door. He opened it himself and said without showing any
surprise at my appearance : — "It's very good of you to come so promptly,
but I didn't expect you to-day." "Why did you expect me at all? " I
said. "Haven't you got my letter?" he replied, "I wrote to you last
night." "To W ? " I said. " Yes," he answered. " But I'm staying at D
and have had no letter," I said. He then took me in, and, to make a long
story short, I found hirn in very great distress, and my coming on the scene
really proved a sort of lifebuoy to a drowning man.

I will conclude this section with one instance in which I seem to have
been the active element of communication. It was of great moment to
her interests, that I should see a young girl on a particular day during the
Christmas holidays. To her, great issues depended on the interview. I
knew her exceedingly well. I wrote to her begging her to see me at 4.30
p.m. precisely, laying great emphasis on the hour. Coming from another
part of the house, I found her knocking at my study door exactly at
4.30 p.m. I commented upon her extraordinary punctuality, when I
found, that she had never received my card, that her call was quite
unpremeditated, and that the encounter was a pure accident.

Now I come to the third generation, in the case of my daughter, who also
has experiences, which may or may not be due to heredity, but, if they are,
show distinct signs of degeneracy.

She received a great shock one day, when about sixteen years of age,
by walking into her bedroom and seeing one of her schoolfellows there,
who, in a few seconds, disappeared. This phenomenon began to occur so
frequently, that she grew quite used to it, and came to the conclusion that it
was in some way due to the condition of her eyes.

A feature of the phenomenon 'was, that she only saw the phantasmal
figures down to the waist. The lower part of the body was never visible,
though she only noticed this when familiarity had removed fear. The most
extraordinary vision was one she had on coming down the road where we
live, when a hearse and long mourning cortege was drawn up in front of
our house. She speculated for whom it was intended, until, all in a
moment, the mirage vanished. This is some years ago, and I am glad to
say we have, as yet, had no death in the house. Nor, indeed, does there
seem to have been at any time any connection between her spectral
experiences and after events.

JULY, 1898.] Correspondence. 269

CORRESPONDENCE.

[The Editor is not responsible for opinions expressed by Correspondents.]

"FACES IN THE DARK."

(To the Editor of the JOURNAL or THE SOCIETY FOK PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.)

St. Louis, April, 1898.

I am glad you have opened the subject of seeing faces in the dark. This
is a capacity which I have cultivated to a limited extent and believe it to be
a normal condition, meaning that one has attained, while awake, the concen-
tration which exists during dreaming. That this condition sometimes
appears during illness, is not necessarily proof that it is of itself objection-
able. Concentration is the most needed of all powers to-day, and anything
which cultivates it is, to that extent, valuable.

I began this cultivation several years ago, by forcing myself, when in the
dark, to see the letters of the alphabet, one by one- -a gold thread on a
black ground. Faces do not come so easily when I am willing them, and
vanish quickly. Sometimes, however, they come spontaneously, and are
then life size, and very close to my eyes.

Frequently entire figures will appear in a landscape, and remain several
minutes, moving about in a most natural way. The most frequent experience
occurs just after waking from a short sleep, when I have remembered not to
open my eyes. In a brilliant yellow light will appear the most beautiful
decorative patterns, tmials, curves, spirals, leaves, blossoms, but all black.

This interests me particularly, because for several generations back in my
family, decorative engraving has been practised, and this would seem to be
a result. The drawing of such designs comes as naturally to me as writing.
Sometimes in this yellow light, there will also be figures, or pages of printing
and names. If, however, I attempt to catch an idea of the printed matter,
it immediately changes to something else, which seems to indicate that it is
automatic nerve action, such as occurs in sleep.

My brother, who is a teacher of long standing, is frequently able to
recall a forgotten name of town or river by closing his eyes, and recalling
the picture of the map containing it ; the name then appears in its proper
place. His son has the same power. This would indicate, I think, that this
capacity is a natural development worthy of attention, as revealing a kind
of progress which may be in store for humanity. — Sincerely,

MRS. C. H. STONE.

76, Mount Vernon Street, Boston, May Wth, 1898.

MY DEAR MR. HODGSON, — ... I was very much interested to
read in the December Journal a letter from Mr. Aug. Glardon concerning
"Faces in the Dark." I have for a very long time found much interest
and amusement in observing faces and scenes which suddenly present them-
selves in the dark, upon (it seems to me) the inner surface of my eyelids,
when I am awake.

270 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, isys.

These visions — if I may call them so — are quite independent of my will ;
indeed, I am unable to call them up when I wish to. They come and go,
apparently as if following some law of their own. My experience is identical
with that of Mr. Glardon in that the faces which I see are always those of
persons unknown to me ; the scenes are unfamiliar, but commonplace, and
might easily have been seen and forgotten. The peculiarity of both faces
and scenes, is their clearness, and solidity, if I may so express it ; in this
they are strikingly different from any deliberate visualisation.

This clearness is, at times, so remarkable that I have been startled ; I
have the impression that what I am seeing with my eyes shut must be
before me.

There are two things which I think characterise almost all these visions ;
first, that there is some movement about them ; and, secondly, that I very
often see only part of a thing — two fingers of a hand, half of a face, an
opening door, with a foot moving across the threshold.

When I deliberately visualise (which I cannot do very easily) or when I
simply remember, the thing which I see in my mind's eye is motionless, and
I see all of it. I visualise a person, for instance, in some action, but it is
always as if they had been caught by a camera, and one particular second of
the action presented to me ; whereas, in these scenes upon my closed eyelids,
there is always motion, and always the feeling of life about them. I am afraid
I am expressing this very awkwardly, but I scarcely know how to put it.

Will you tell me whether this habit of seeing faces with one's eyes closed
is some peculiar form of memory ? I should have concluded that it was
except that I have never seen anything which was familiar to me. Only
once have I seen anything of striking interest, and as I had no means of
knowing whether it ever took place, it has no importance. . . . Very
sincerely yours,

MARUARET DELAND.

(To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.)

Detroit, Mich., June 3rd, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — The correspondence in No. 148 of the Journal from Mr. A.
Lang in regard to crystal-gazing, recalls a recent experience which may have
some bearing on the phenomena. I had been confined to bed for three days
with a mild type of fever. On the fourth day, following a night of profuse
perspiration, which marked the beginning of convalescence or the " crisis,"
I noticed that although apparently in a normal condition, on closing my
eyes there would instantly flash into view visions of remarkable variety in
colour, scenery, and movement. Scene succeeded scene with great rapidity.
Seemingly with every movement of the eyeballs a new scene appeared.
These hallucinations continued for about two days while my temperature
was lowering to near normal, gradually becoming fainter and less frequent.
The pictures embraced an inconceivable variety of scenes, but were in
general so fleeting that the impression made by them was gradually effaced,
and I can now recall only a few of the more striking ones. Many of them
contained persons engaged in different actions. Sometimes they would

JULY, 1898.] Correspondence. 271

appear close enough and present a front view of the face so that their
features could have been recognised. There was nothing hazy or indistinct
about the images. All were sharply defined as in dream pictures, and in
incessant motion in a majority of cases. Colours especially were exhibited
n endless variety. I remember one in which I seemed to be in front of a
1,-inje structure, and my attention was arrested by the sight of a man in
military clothes and having the appearance of an officer of high rank sitting
at an upper story window and looking out so as to present a profile to my
view. I did not seem to be aware of his presence until, as if by oblique
vision, as I was not looking directly at him, I saw him turn his head slowly
around, presenting a nearly full front view of his face, but before I could look
directly at him his head turned slowly around again and I saw only a profile
view, which in a very short time faded entirely from my sight. This des-
cription is, I believe, accurate ; being one of the first, it made a lasting
impression. In another scene I seemed to be in a box at a theatre watching
a play in progress. This vision lasted perhaps a minute or more. Another
scene represented a street scene in winter, the ground covered with snow, a
street car with men standing on the rear platform in heavy ulsters, the
conductor assisting a lady to alight, pedestrians passing back and forth.
Many pictures of places apparently in foreign countries, oriental and tropical
lands. I cannot say that I recognised any of the pictures or persons,
although it is possible they may have been latent in my memory based on
pictures in books seen long ago. A common experience was that of seeing
several persons and watching first one and then another, wondering what
that one would do next and feeling vexed at not being able to take in all
that was going on before my eyes. I can think of nothing which compares
so well with this particular experience as the feeling one has in attending a
three ring circus and trying to see everything.

The condition of the brain producing these visions seemed to bear a
definite relation to the course of the fever. They appeared concomitant
with certain well-defined symptoms and dissipated with the return to a
normal condition. I have never seen these visions at any other time in my
life. I was in full possession of my faculties and remarked to my nurse and
doctor on the strangeness of the visions. The next day after the subsidence
of the visions I was able to leave my bed and walk about. These visions
were probably entirely similar to those seen by aid of a crystal ; I believe
that the latter are observed to better advantage on closing the eyes in a dark
room after gazing at the crystal for some time. I was in a company recently
where this was done and many of them declared that they saw pictures.
The faculty can probably be developed with practice, although to some it is
entirely normal, and they are able to see at all times scenes similar to those
I observed in an abnormal condition. Certain drugs have, it is well-known,
the property of producing these hallucinations. The whole subject with its
allied phenomena is of the highest import in connection with the study of
the workings of the secondary consciousness. — Yours truly,

H. W. CLOUGH,
(Associate A.B.S.P.R.).

272 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1898.

THE KNOCKINGS AT LONG WITTENHAM.

23, Crafts Avenue, Northampton, Mass., May 16</i, 1898.
DEAR DR. HODGSON, — May not the mysterious knockings and rappings
reported in the May Journal have been simply the effect of sympathetic
vibrations due to sound waves 'I I venture the suggestion because this spring
the windows in my house have repeatedly rattled in a way to produce the
impression of rappings, or, when the sound is fainter, tappings, and there is
no doubt that the movements are caused by the fall of water over a dam a
hundred yards or so away. The water in falling makes very distinct
"beats." All the houses in the neighbourhood and none, so far as I can
ascertain, in other parts of the town, are affected in the same way. The
sounds start and stop in the most unaccountable fashion, depending,
apparently, on the coincidence of a number of conditions. I have got quite
used to them now, being well aware of their source ; but when I first heard
them, they seemed to be just as though some one were knocking on the
window-pane or on the wood-work. Is it not just possible that at Long
Wittenham, on the night referred to, when the bells were ringing from a
number of steeples and when, perhaps, the distant trains and signals at
Didcot were further disturbing the air, similar conditions were temporarily
established, producing a similar succession of "beats" and a similar
sympathetic shaking of windows, shutters and doors ? The query suggests,
at least, that there may be other explanations of the phenomenon besides
owls, bats, or kicking horses and that there are other alternatives besides
practical jokes or ghosts. — Yours very truly,

H. NORMAN GARDINER.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF DYING.

(To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.)
3, St. Albans Road, Kensington, W., June 3rd, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — I have read Mr. Hyslop's letter in the June number of the
Journal, and can give an instance of consciousness of dying in the case of a
friend of mine, a Miss E. Y. S., who died of cancer some two years ago.

I was with her nearly every day for some time before her death, and on
the occasion of my last visit did not expect to find her alive, and she seemed
speechless and comatose when I went in, and the nurse said she " was
almost gone." However, she lived for an hour after my entrance, and
suddenly, half an hour before her death, she, with a great effort, raised her
hand to her lips and kissed it and waved to me ; then later, three minutes
before death, she signed to the nurse to raise her in bed, and to our amaze-
ment, ejaculated "Go " to me — she did not wish me to see her die, fearing
my distress. I could see that her mind was perfectly clear, and that she
was quite conscious of the approach of death. After this supreme effort
she drew a few gentle breaths and was gone. — Yours sincerely,

JESSIE HALL.

JULY, 18!»8.) Correspondence. 273

Tour de Peilz, June oth, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — It seems to me that Prof. Hyslop's problem on the conscious-
ness of di/iuii is one of those that cannot be solved except by people who may
happen to bo behind the scene — in another world. It implies a contradic-
tion which is perhaps only apparent ; who can tell? but which effectually
puts a stop to inquiry. If Professor Hyslop had spoken only of the con-
sciousness of being on the point of dying, on the verge of death, that is,
about to lose consciousness, I could afford a testimony or two on the fact that
some people are conscious of being close to the loss of consciousness.

A friend of mine, a medical man, died a few years ago of a disease of
the heart. During his last moments, his family being around his bed, he
kept his finger on his pulse, saying that in five minutes, in three, in two,
his heart would cease to move. About a minute afterwards he fainted, and
his breath stopped at the end of the two minutes given by him as the
last ones.

I can give another perhaps more striking illustration of persistence to
the last of the cerebral faculties. An uncle of mine, near eighty years of
age, had been descending the hill of life gently for some months without
being perceptibly ill. One evening, he was smoking his last pipe in his
study, near the fire, sitting in his armchair. His wife was on a sofa close
by ; his son, named Ernest, in a room at the other end of the passage.
After having finished his pipe, my uncle knocked the ashes on the grate, put
his pipe down on the chimney-piece, and told my aunt that he was feeling
faint. At the same moment he felt his own pulse and exclaimed : " Hallo !
my heart is stopping. Go and fetch Ernest ; the end has come." My aunt
opened the door and shouted to her son. As he came into the room,
hardly one minute having elapsed, my uncle peacefully closed his eyes and
went to sleep the sleep of which there is no waking.

This, of course, does not prove that man survives after the dissolution of
his body ; still I think it is rather striking, as showing the possibility in
certain cases of keeping one's cerebral powers and one's consciousness
unimpaired up to the very moment of death.

Farther on we cannot go, and just as a candle sometimes gives a last and
brighter flash at the moment of dying out, it is possible in a materialistic
point of view to explain the phenomenon alluded to as being the last
manifestation of a chemical or physiological process in a dying brain. I do
not, of course, believe it to be the case ; but I deem that every effort to
prove anything about the persistence of consciousness in and through
death would be unavailing. I believe in life after death, but without any
sensible or logical demonstration ; and I do not see how it could ever be
otherwise. . . .

AUG. GLARDON.

SPIRITUALISM AND SPIRIT IDENTITY.

Wimbledon, May 21st, 1898.

SIR, — I have followed with interest the discussion on Spirits and ask to
be allowed to make a few remarks on the subject.

274 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1898.

The tornado picture is good so far as it goes and Mr. Bennett is justified
in discriminating the whirlwind (spirit) from the dust (body), and in asking
vis to conceive the whirlwind as pursuing its wild career after leaving the
belt of desert from which it drew its embodiment. The simile can be pushed
a little further. If the wind may exist after dropping the dust it may have
existed before raising the dust, which brings us face to face with the doctrine
of Pre-existence.

I do not share the objection to such pictures on the ground of their
"gross materialism." This means no more than that they are graphically
physical or phenomenal, which is just what a picture ought to be. All our
conceptions, even the most noumenal, have to be constructed in phenomenal
imagery. A concrete picture may embody a law which can easily be
abstracted from the irrelevant details. The word " law " itself is a case in
point ; we speak of natural laws without supposing they are issued by any-
thing like a political government.

May I propose another picture on the relation of mind and body 1 It
has haunted me for years and may assist speculation.

The mind (the seat of consciousness and energy) is not in the body but
works it from a distance, as a commercial firm or joint-stock company
domiciled in London may work for its account a machinery plant in Lanca-
shire or South Africa. The medium of communication is generally invisible,
but something that may be this medium is said to be seen by clairvoyants.
Companies and their machinery, we know, are much more apparent than
the letters and telegrams by which the one directs the other.

Physiologists and others assert that the mind is in the brain, but they
have not found it there, and all the facts they adduce are equally consistent
with the other hypothesis.

Spirit is not mind,, but an intermediate or alternative body. In our
parable it is the local staff at Johannesburg, and while the works are in
action the members of the staff are distributed about and among the works
and are indistinguishable from them. That is why we do not see the spirit
of a living man ; it is distributed through his nervous system.

But let the works break down, or wear out, and then the local staff
separates from them, and can exist and be seen as an independent entity.
So spirits may exist and be seen after death.

The company survives though its works perish and its staff may be
scattered : that is the perpetuation of an individual in spite of death and the
dissolution of the spirit.

The same company may outlast several sets of machinery — an observation
that accords with the theory of re-incarnation.

The company may abandon its work in Africa and start a fresh enterprise
in Australia with new machinery ; that is the transfer of a being from one
sphere or world to another.

Observe the conception our picture offers of "spirit control." A company
domiciled in Berlin has some workmen at Johannesburg but no machinery.
These men attack the British staff, overcome them, seize the works, and cut
off communication with London. The works now act in a German instead

JULY, ISMS.] Correspondence. 275

of a British manner. That is the case of a body passing under the control of
another spirit and mind.

Members of the S.P.R. are familiar with the idea of multiple personality.
It is a truth. A mind, like a company, consists of many egos, and now one
and then another group of them get the upper hand. These correspond to
the successive boards of direction in whom is invested the authority of a
company.

Anyone familiar with the facts and alleged facts of psychology can work
out the analogies for himself. The imagery requires a good deal of trimming
to bring it into philosophical shape, and it has to be elaborated in conjunction
with a correct theory of Perception, not the common Natural Realism. — I
am Sir, yours faithfully,

D. B. McLiACHLAN.

I suppose that Mr. Lane Fox's letter in the June Journal craves for some
reply, though this must not take the form of a rambling discussion of half-
revealed metaphysical dogmas. Obviously the Journal is not the place for
matters of the sort, and it will be my object to recall the discussion to the
point from which it has strayed. The point was whether, when we find
'spirit' communications of a personal type, we are justified in inferring
from them the persistence of personality through what we call 'death.'
This method of interpretation is asserted by the spiritualists, and has
recently been (provisionally, at least) endorsed by the great authority of Dr.
Hodgson ; Mr. Lane Fox chose to make this a peg whereon to hang sundry
reflections of his own tending to exhibit his superiority to the low-minded
and grovelling superstitions of the spiritualists. I ventured to point out
to him that he was not entitled to take up this attitude, and I ought, I
suppose, to be satisfied with having succeeded in inducing him now to
represent himself as " humbly urging" his views. That is certainly not what
he did at first.

I also felt that Mr. Lane Fox had from the first lost sight of the main
point (which alone would have made his discussion relevant and profitable)
as to whether the personality of the ' spirits ' was sufficiently similar to that
of the living to justify us in treating them as continuations of the latter ;
but I hardly expected him to admit this so naively and to defend himself by
saying that he " had merely failed to discover its importance." Just so — he
has missed the point. For if that is not the important point for the psychical
researcher, what is ? Surely not Mr. Lane Fox's metaphysical doctrines, his
conviction that persons are egotistical, and that selves must be " absolutely
separate." What we want is a working theory, and Mr. Lane Fox's theories
are certainly not scientific, whatever their ethical and metaphysical character.

The truth is that Mr. Lane Fox does not regard the question of ' spirit
identity' from the standpoint of a psychical researcher. He has simply
made a pretext of the poor ' spirits ' in order to vent his spite on certain
metaphysical views which are obnoxious to him, but have no special relation
to the evidence for ' spirit identity.' He dislikes the notion of a " perma-
nent self or ego " (so far as he understands it) ; he analyses himself into
"a transitory polarisation of feelings, tastes and desires," and supposes that

276 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1898.

he thereby betters himself and changes the facts. If he really feels the
better for it, and finds himself able to explain the facts of his mental con-
stitution in this way (including those which, like his own identity, he
appeared to overlook), so be it. It pleases him, and will not hurt others.
But he ought to recognise that his quarrel is not with the dead, but with
the living, that the personality he contests is that of the latter. And
it strikes me as ungenerous to deprive the a^tv^va Kiipr^va of the
defenceless dead of their personality merely because you want to attack
that of the living !

I pass to a few comments on Mr. Massey's letter. His views appear to
differ very radically from Mr. Lane Fox's, although he also seems more
disposed to discuss the bearing of the conception of ' spirit identity ' on
his metaphysics than to examine its usefulness as a method of investigation.
Mr. Massey can conceive the empirical personality as surviving 'death,' but
not as maintaining itself in its post mortem existence. This difficulty is
both odd and old (it is propounded, e.g., by Cebes in Plato's Phcedo 88 A),
and to my mind the answer to it is simple. If personality is tough enough
to survive death it must be credited with the power to persist in its new phase
of existence. At all events it would seem ludicrously premature to dogmatise
upon the subject. I will confess, too, that M. D'Assier's interpretation of
the facts seems to me to combine almost every incongruity and absurdity.
But, again, Mr. Massey is free to believe as he pleases, and I would only
draw his attention to the very different way in which Dr. Hodgson inter-
prets the peculiarities in "spirit communications" which led to D'Assier's
theory.

And, not to speak of ethics, I must say I much prefer Dr. Hodgson's
interpretation, both on physical and on psychological grounds. That spirit
communication should be difficult is what I should have inferred on physical
grounds, that it should be rare and exhibit a gradual diminution of interest
iii and memory of our concerns is precisely what I should have inferred on
the supposition that the human personality takes its known psychological
constitution with it. The wonder is rather that the deceased should trouble
themselves at all about us and have leisure to devise means of communica-
tion with the world they have left. For if we are to conceive them as surviv-
ing death at all, it must be as ipso facto entering into a new and engrossing
phase of existence (all the more engrossing because of its novelty) and as
needing to adapt themselves to new conditions of existence. And it is
not unreasonable to suppose that even if they could effectively desire to
communicate they might not find the means available. Hence there need be
no trace of cynicism in the suggestion that probably the dead forget the
living far more rapidly even than the living forget the dead : it merely
expresses a psychological necessity. We forget because life absorbs our
energies and robs us of the leisure to remember : the departed, if they
survive, must forget, because a new life must absorb their energies and cut
off their associations with the past to an indefinitely greater degree. Is
there not, therefore, more than a touch of human conceit in the imagination
Avhich depicts the spirits of the dead as having no other function than to

JULY, isoH.i Cases. 277

hover invisibly around the living as futile spectators of the follies and the
crimes of earth ? Nay, will not the notion appear grotesque as soon as we
take up a less geocentric position in our eschatology and look at the matter
from the point of view of the ' dead' ?

On the whole then, the scantiness and scrappiness of the alleged spirit
coiniuiinications should not as yet provoke remonstrance, but rather gratitude.
Possibly, too, we might have less reason to complain that "no traveller
returns," or that if he does, he brings no travellers' tales to rejoice our ears,
if the accommodation we offered to such travellers were a little better. No
doubt a few spiritualists and psychical researchers do their best to recall
spirits from the vasty deep wherein they may be conceived to disport them-
selves, but could they conscientiously recommend the facilities they offer
to a departed friend as either interesting or edifying for him ? And how
many have even an open mind upon such questions ? The human mind is a
most inhospitable thing and not at all disposed to entertain novelties ; even
angels have to slip in unawares. How much more so in this case when such
messengers from another sphere would have to force their way through the
barriers created by our ordinary modes of life and thought, would have to
overcome the inner loathing with which, I am convinced, the vast majority
of men regard (and always have regarded) anything that could obtrude
upon them an effective recognition of a wider environment to which they
would need to readjust their actions. This loathing everybody who has
penetrated to men's real beliefs must have encountered, and it is psycho-
logically quite intelligible. My excuse for dwelling at such length upon
such very hypothetical considerations must be that though I am well aware
that the facts alone can ratify our theories, we yet need a good supply of
not uncriticised theories to guide us in analysing the ' facts.'

F. C. S. SCHILLER.

CASES.
G. 255.

The following case conies from Lady Seeley, who writes : —

St. John's Croft, Cambridge, March 22nd, 1898.

DEAR PROFESSOR SIDGWICK, — I sent enclosed paper to B., who brought
it back to-day and signed it, after I had altered the word " entirely " on the
last page to "largely." B. expressed astonishment that I had been able to
draw up so accurate an account from memory, — but B. is a particularly
clear and intelligent narrator. B. does not wish any names given, regarding
this experience as something sacred, and the most interesting event, so far,
in life. B. has had no other ghostly or " psychical " experience of any kind
whatever. B. was perfectly well at the time, and certainly not asleep at so
«arly an hour, and never does drop off to sleep except at night. The
"experience" occurred early in the evening. B. is surprised, on looking
back, at not having felt the slightest shock or astonishment at A.'s appear-
ance. The event occurred about three years ago. . . . — Yours very

8incerelr' M. A. P. SEELEY.

278 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 18»8.

The following is the statement as revised by " B."

March 22nd, 1898.

A. and B. were great friends. B. being particularly attached to A. A.
died, leaving a young married daughter, who suffered so intensely from her
bereavement as to cause her husband the greatest anxiety for her health.
B., holding strictly orthodox opinions, suffered not only grief for a great
personal loss, but a constant and most painful anxiety concerning A.'s state
after death ; A.'s religious convictions and practice having been of an
extremely vague and lax description. One evening about three months after
A.'s death, B. was alone reading, when something in the book brought back
the painful thoughts, and the book was closed. Then A. came up quite
close on B.'s left, putting the right arm behind B.'s head and pressing the
forehead with a hand which felt warm and pleasant as in life. A. appeared
in the usual black clothing, well and happy, as before the wasting illness.
A.'s attitude was unusual, but the whole appearance so perfectly natural
that B. was not in the least startled, and was just exclaiming "Oh ! I am
so happy to see you," when A. disappeared. But the comforting impression
left on B.'s mind largely removed the previous painful fears and trouble, and
A.'s daughter was so much comforted, when B. reported to her this visit, —
proving the continued and happy existence of her parent, — that her hus-
band's anxiety was removed.

The above is a faithful account of my experience.

(Signed) B.

G. 256.

The following account was sent to me by Mr. John E. Wilkie at
the suggestion of one of our American members, who is well known
to me, and who speaks in the highest terms of Mr. Wilkie as a
witness. — R.H.

Washington, D.C., April llth, 1898.

In October, 1895, while living in London, England, I was attacked by
bronchitis in rather a severe form, and on the advice of my physician, Dr.
Oscar C. De Wolf, went to his residence in 6, Grenville-place, Cromwell-road,
where I could be under his immediate care. For two days I was confined to
my bed, and about five o'clock in the afternoon of the third day, feeling
somewhat better, I partially dressed myself, slipped on a heavy bath robe,
and went down to the sitting room on the main floor, where my friend, the
doctor, usually spent a part of the afternoon in reading . A steamer chair
was placed before the fire by one of the servants, and I was made comfort-
able with pillows. The doctor was present, and sat immediately behind me
reading. I dropped off into a light doze, and slept for perhaps thirty minutes.
Suddenly I became conscious of the fact that I was about to awaken ; T was
in a condition where I was neither awake nor asleep. I realised fully that
I had been asleep, and I was equally conscious of the fact that I was not
wide awake, While in this peculiar mental condition I suddenly said to
myself: "Wait a minute. Here is a message for the doctor." At the

.h i.v, isns. i Cd- 279

mmm-iit I fancied that I had upon my lap a pad of paper, and I thought I
\\ i"tr upon this pad with a pencil the following words :---

"Dear Doctor : Do you remember Katy McGuire, who used to live with
you in Chester '( She died in 1872. She hopes you are having a good time
in London."

Instantly thereafter I found myself wide awake, felt no surprise at not
finding (lie p.-ul of paper on my knee, because I then realised that that was
but the hallucination of a dream, but impressed with that feature of my
thought which related to the message, I partly turned my head, and, speaking
over my shoulder to the doctor, said : "Doctor, I have a message for you."

The doctor looked up from the British Medical Journal which he was
reading, and said : " What's that ? "

" I have a message for you," I repeated. " It is this : ' Dear Doctor : Do
you remember Katy McGuire who used to live with you in Chester ? She
died in 1872. She hopes you are having a good time in London. ' "

The doctor looked at me with amazement written all over his face, and
said : " Why, what the devil do you mean 1 "

" I don't know anything about it except that just before I woke up I
was impelled to receive this message which I have just delivered to you."

" Did you ever hear of Katy McGuire ? " asked the doctor.

" Never in my life."

"Well, "said the doctor, "That's one of the most remarkable things
I ever heard of. My father for a great many years lived at Chester, Mass.
There was a neighbouring family named McGuire, and Katy McGuire,
a daughter of this neighbour, frequently came over to our house, as the
younger people in a country village will visit their neighbours, and used to
assist my mother in the lighter duties about the house. I was absent from
Chester from about 1869 to about 1873. I had known Katy, however, as a
daughter of our neighbour and knew that she used to visit the house. She
died sometime during the absence I speak of, but as to the exact date of her
death I am not informed."

That closed the incident, and although the doctor told me that he would
write to his old home to ascertain the exact date of Katy's death, I have
never heard from him further in the matter. I questioned him at the
time as to whether he had recently thought of Katy McGuire, and he
told me that her name had not occurred to him for twenty years, and that
he might never have recalled it had it not been for the rather curious
incident which had occurred. In my own mind I could only explain the
occurrence as a rather unusual coincidence. I was personally aware of the
fact that the doctor's old home had been in Chester, Mass., and had
frequently talked with him of his earlier experiences in life when he began
practice in that city, but never at any time during these conversations had
the name of this neighbour's daughter been mentioned, nor had the name of
the neighbour been mentioned, our conversation relating entirely to the
immediate members of the family, particularly the doctor's father, who was
a noted practitioner in that district.

JOHN E. WILKIE.

280 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [JULY, 1898.

Dr. De Wolf, in reply to my first inquiry, wrote : —

6, Grenville Place, Cromwell Road, S.W., April 29th, 1898.

DEAR SIR, —In reply to your letter of the 27th inst., I regret that I
cannot recall with any definite recollection the incident to which Mr.
Wilkie refers.

I do remember that he told me one morning he had had a remarkable
dream — or conference with someone who knew me when a young lad. —
Very truly yours, QSCAR c

I then sent Mr. Wilkie's account to Dr. De Wolf, with further
inquiries, to which Dr. De Wolf replied as follows : —

6, Grenville Place, Cromwell Road, S.W., May 4th, 1898.

DEAR SIR, — Mr. Wilkie's statement is correct except as to unimportant
detail. My father practised his profession of medicine, in Chester, Mass.,
for sixty years — dying in 1890. I was born in Chester and lived there until
1857, when I was in Paris studying medicine for four years. In 1861 I
returned to America and immediately entered the Army as surgeon and
served until the close of the war in 1865. In 1866 I located in Northampton,
Mass., where I practised my profession until 1873, when I removed to
Chicago.

Chester is a hill town in Western Mass., and Northampton is seventeen
miles distant. While in Northampton I was often at my father's house —
probably every week — and during some of the years from 1866 to 1873 I
knew Katy McGuire as a servant assisting my mother.

She was an obliging and pleasant girl and always glad to see me. She
had no family in Chester (as Mr. Wilkie says) and I do not know where she
came from. Neither do I know where or when she died — but I know she is
dead. There is nothing left of my family in Chester. The old homestead
still remains with me, and I visit it every year.

The strange feature (to me) of this incident is the fact that I had not
thought of this girl for many years, and Mr. Wilkie was never within 500
miles of Chester.

We had been warm friends since soon after my location in Chicago,
where he was connected with a department of the Chicago Tribune. I
came to London in 1892 and Mr. Wilkie followed the next year as the
manager of Low's American Exchange, 3, Northumberland Avenue. His
family did not join him until 1895, which explains his being in my house
when ill.

Mr. Wilkie is a very straightforward man and not given to illusions of
any kind. He is now the chief of the Secret Service Department of the
U.S. Government, Washington, D.C.

Neither of us were believers in spiritual manifestations of this character,
and this event so impressed us that we did not like to talk about it, and it
has been very seldom referred to when we met. — Very truly yours,

OSCAR C. DE WOLF.

No. CLII -VOL. VIII. OCTOBEB, 1898.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAOB

A Case of " Spirit " Identity 281

Obituary. Lfc.-Col. J. Hartley 295

Correspondence : —

" Faces in the Dark " 295

Spiritualism and Spirit Identity 296

Cases .298

A CASE OF "SPIRIT" IDENTITY.
Communicated by PROFESSOR A. ALEXANDER.

The London paper Light, of March 21st, 1896, published under
the heading " Spirit Identity," the subjoined translation from the
Revue Spirite. It is a letter from San Paulo, in Brazil, containing
the account of a hypnotic experiment which was attended with
remarkable results.

Dr. O. Vidigal resides at No. 2, Allies du Triomphe, with his family,
comprising his wife, two children, and his aged father. His mother died
three months ago. Requiring a young domestic, he went to the emigration
depot, and arranged to take a Spanish girl about twelve years of age, who
had just arrived that day, and who did not know a word of Portuguese, and,
of course, she did not know her employer.

The girl had lost her father, and on the evening of her arrival at Dr.
Vidigal's the latter had a visitor, Mons. Edouard Silva, a native of Gibraltar,
who could speak Spanish. This gentleman, having asked for a glass of
water, the little girl brought it to him, and he, being a good magnetiser,
asked her — by an inexplicable intuition, it is said — if she would consent to
be magnetised. She agreed, and in a few moments she was put into a
trance of a marked character.

Suddenly raising her eyes and looking into the air, she said in agitated
fashion that she saw extremely beautiful things and asked that they might
not be removed from her gaze. After a few minutes of silent contemplation
she told them that she saw her father and that he spoke to her. Making
with her hand a kind of ear-trumpet, she listened an instant and said that
her father told her an old lady, whom she also saw, had a request to make to
Dr. Vidigal. She described this old lady very minutely, and the whole
family recognised the description as that of the doctor's deceased mother.

282 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1898.

Then the spirit of this lady— still through the little medium— enjoined her
son to open the room which she formerly occupied, and which had been
closed for the three months that had elapsed since her decease ; to take
down a black silk dress hanging there on the wall, and he would find in a
pocket, entirely sewed up, the sum of seventy-five thousand rees, which was
to be handed to her husband. (There is a ring of wealth about this amount
which is deceptive to those unacquainted with the value of a ree ; a thousand
rees — a rnilree — used to be worth 5s. 7|d., which would yield a total slightly
in excess of twenty guineas. It appears to have fallen greatly in value, but
it does seem a little rough on the old lady to reduce the grand total to the
slender sum the amount now represents.)*

Those who were present when the girl made the revelation could hardly
bring themselves to give it serious attention, but when the members of the
family considered that she had been with them barely a day, and only two
days in Brazil altogether, and, further, that she could not possibly have
known what she announced to them, they resolved to verify on the spot the
accuracy of the communication. They went to the room, accompanied by
Mons. Silva and three neighbours, who from curiosity wished to witness the
result. Dr. Vidigal had considerable difficulty in opening the door, the lock
having become rusty, but when they got in they found the black dress
hanging from the wall as indicated, and in one of the pockets, which was
wholly sewn up, they found the exact sum of money named. The writer of
the account is Mr. Manfred Meyer.

At Dr. Richard Hodgson's request inquiries have been made into
the particulars of this case. For the investigator, who can rarely
absent himself from Rio, it was possible to undertake the long journey
to San Paulo only at certain seasons of the year. Some of the
persons who testify to the above account had moved to other places of
residence. Hence delays were occasioned in obtaining the evidence
which is here presented. In June, 1896, four of the principal
witnesses were interviewed : Dr. Orencio Vidigal, his wife Dona Julia,
Mr. Edward Silva, and his daughter Amalia. In January, 1897,
Dona Maria Freitas, the doctor's mother-in-law, who was also present
at the hypnotic experiment, was visited at her hacienda near Bacae-
tava. In the latter year, another witness, Dr. Theodomiro Telles, who
had been absent in the north of Brazil, returned to San Paulo.
Through the intermedium of a third person, certain written questions
were submitted to him ; but to these he refused to reply, saying rather
irrelevantly that as a doctor and a sensible man he could not believe
in Spiritism. In view of his remark it seemed possible that he might

* The Brazilian milrcis — nobody says "a thousand rees " — is equal to 27d. at par.
In 1898, at the date of the old lady's death, it had fallen to 12d. and it fell still lower
in the ensuing months so that 75 milreis would then have been less than £3 15s.
The singular of " reis " is " real," not " ree."

OCT., I8U8.] A COM of "Spirit" Identity. 283

have something to adduce that would lessen, or destroy, the impor-
tance of the evidence already collected. Such, however, was not the
case. A personal interview with him in February, 1898, elicited very
little in favour of, and nothing against, the credibility of the state-
ments made by the other deponents.

The proof of " spirit " identity obtained at Dr. Vidigal's house
came about the month of September, 1893. Before proper inquiries
were made into the occurrence, nearly three years had passed away —
a lapse of time that has sensibly affected the memory of some of the
informants. Taken collectively, however, their testimony, so far as it
goes, may be regarded as quite reliable. The essential part of Senr.
Manfredo Meyer's narrative stands confirmed, but the details presented
by him are shown to be very inaccurate. He gives a false impression
that the case was recent at the time of its publication. In September,
1893, Dr. Vidigal had only one child, and his father was not then
residing with him. The evidence tends to prove that the Spanish girl
had been some days at the emigration depot before she was hired, and
it is not at all certain that Mr. Silva's visit coincided with the evening
of her arrival. Some stress is laid on the fact that the girl did not
know the language of her new country ; but it must be recollected
that Spanish and Portuguese are so very similar that a knowledge of
one of these languages will soon enable a person to seize the drift of
what is said in the other. The " magnetic " experiment was made to
satisfy the curiosity of one of the ladies and was not led up to by any
" inexplicable intuition." The dress referred to by the somnambule
was of light-coloured cotton and not of black silk ; it was found
hanging on the inside of the door and not on the wall of the room
occupied by the deceased person. After the message had been
received, this apartment was entered by Donas Julia and Amalia, and
neither Mr. Silva nor Dr. Vidigal accompanied them on this occasion.
It will also be seen that the doctor himself was quite aware that his
mother was accustomed to keep money sewn up in the pocket of her
dresses. The defects of the published narrative are those of an
account received at second hand. The narrator, Senr. Manfredo
Meyer, is a gentleman of good position and repute in San Paulo— one
who would not voluntarily make any statement that he considered
incorrect. Before sending his letter to the Revue Spirite, he showed
it to Dr. Vidigal, and obtained his consent to publication.

As a first step towards obtaining more definite information
respecting the alleged occurrence, a list of questions was sent, on the
15th of May, 1896, to Dr. Vidigal, and with this was included a
translation of the letter as it appeared in Liyht. These inquiries met

284 Jon.rtiid of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 18!>S.

with courteous attention on his part, the answers sent by him being
as follows : —

1. What is the name of the little somiiambule ?
Francisca.

2. Was it the first time that she was hypnotised ?
Yes.

3. Had she any recollection of the occurrence after she had been awaked?
She was entranced twice. The tirst time she had no recollection of the

facts ; the second time, however, we awoke her with a full memory [of all
that had occurred].

4. What is her character in the normal state 1

Good. [She is] of sanguine temperament. Her trance is characterised
by pallor.

5. Could the magnetiser have had any previous knowledge of the
particulars given by the somnambule ? Would he not have been aware, for
instance, of the appearance of the deceased lady ?

[He could have had] none, for we became acquainted only after her
decease.

6. Is the narrative transcribed in the inclosed translation exact in all
points ?

[To this I reply] affirmatively : it could not be more exact, for we
observed [the facts of] the narrative personally, my family being present.*

7. What were the particulars given by the girl in her description of the
deceased lady ?

[With regard to] the symptoms shown by the somnambule, her eyes were
lit with pleasure, she being in the presence of wonderful things ; and it was
observed that she sometimes laughed at and applauded [them], asking that
they might be repeated. She often heard badly and placed her right hand
against the external ear in order to listen to greater advantage. It was
remarked that she showed signs of gladness, and of [having entered into]
some kind of communication.

8. Is it not very probable that some of the persons of the household
knew that the black dress was hanging on the wall in the room of the
deceased lady ?

We do not know the reason why the wearing apparel remained in the
room.

9. Is it not possible that some one knew that that lady carried about
with her money sewn up in one of her pockets ?

[To this I reply] negatively. [Neither I], nor any other person of the
family, [knew of it].

10. Would you not even know the exact sum which she was accustomed
to keep in this manner ?

No.

11. What motive had the deceased for thus sewing up her money in her
dress ?

* This is probably the meaning of this loosely-worded answer.

OCT., iw»s.] A Case of "Spirit" Identity.

She used to keep this money as the product of [her] savings. It was
employed in the celebration of masses, as the message given by the girl
medium was satisfactory to us.

12. Was it really on this occasion that the room was entered for the first
time after the death 1

I cannot answer with certainty, for I do not know whether, or not, this
apartment had indeed been entered by stealth (violado).

Dr. Vidigal was further requested to give the date of his mother's
death, and of the visit of Mr. Edward Silva. In reply to this he
continues : —

The decease took place on the 16th of June, 1893, (nearly at midnight).
Dr. E. Silva paid us the visit about three months after the decease.

Nothing more occurring to me respecting a matter of such serious and
scientific interest, I sign my name to the above in witness of the truth.

(Signed) DR. O. VIDIGAL.
San Paulo, 18th of June, 1896.

It is very apparent that in replying to these questions Dr. Vidigal
did nob always apprehend their meaning, which was, however, as clear
in Portuguese as it is in the above English translation. Nos. 4, 7,
and 8 are answered at cross-purposes. His replies to 11 and 12 intro-
duced, quite unnecessarily, doubts which were dispelled only by
subsequent investigation. His assertions that Senr. Meyer's account
could not be more exact, and that he did not know of his mother's
habit of sewing her money in her pocket, were surely made without
due reflection, or with much mental laxity, for they are not in accord-
ance with fact. These answers must be considered jointly with the
more trustworthy information elicited from the witness when he was
personally interviewed. For the sake of comparison his oral state-
ments are arranged, as far as possible, in the same order as his written
replies : —

1. The little servant was called Francisca. She had been at the emigra-
tion depot probably some days before she was engaged by the doctor. Her
mother, who objected to the seances, withdrew her from the service shortly
afterwards.

2. She was hypnotised twice, at an interval of about two days. It was
on the second occasion that neighbours were present.

3. The girl liked being hypnotised, and asked to be thrown again into
the trance in order to speak to her father. (Dr. Vidigal's written answer to
the third inquiry is in all probability correct. It seems that, besides the
two stances mentioned, there was some further experimentation with the
girl enfamille.)

4. In her normal state the girl was remiss in the execution of her duties
and needed scolding.

286 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1898.

5. The witness became acquainted with Mr. Silva only a short time
before the first stance took place.

6. He stated that Senr. Meyer called on him to obtain leave to publish
the account that appeared in the Revue Spirite, and he seemed to think
that that gentleman's narrative of the facts was quite satisfactory.

7. Francisca in her trance described the old lady whom she professed to
see as a tall, thin, pale person with black hair. She went through the action
of shaking hands with the supposed communicator and declared that the
band that grasped hers was a cold one. The old lady was said to be " in
glory (na gloria). " The witness, who was apparently labouring under some
discouragement at the time, expressed a desire to be with his mother ; but,
through the little somnambule, he was reminded that he had yet duties to
perform towards his family and must, therefore, have patience. The girl
•declared there were some things she was not permitted to tell.

8. With regard to the dress referred to in the narrative, they were not
aware that it was hanging in the room. Francisca did not say that it was of
black silk ; she spoke of it as " the dress behind the door."

9. The witness did not recollect whether the girl described the pocket as
being sewn up ; but he evidently knew that his mother was in the habit of
securing her money in this manner.

10. The doctor's statements tended to prove that, even supposing it were
remembered that the dress was in the room, it did not occur to them that
money might remain stitched up in the pocket. A fortiori they could not
know the exact amount thus secured. He thought that masses had been
asked for ; but however that might have been, the money found was spent
in masses.

11. Although courageous in other respects, the old lady was in her life-
time abnormally afraid of thieves. Thus she would tie up her money in
packets and carry her jewels in a little receptacle fastened to her wrist.

12. At the time of the experiments with the girl Francisca the only
members of the witness's family who lived in the house were his wife and
child. Afterwards, by the advice of the trance personage, his father came
to reside with him. His wife had a dread of the room where the death had
taken place. As for the servants, they would hardly have entered it with-
out permission. The witness could not say whether the door of the room
was opened after the first, or after the second, sitting.

This second deposition, although more to the point, is still not
quite reliable. Having possibly in mind the state of his mother, Dona
Angelica, during her last illness, Dr. Vidigal supposed that the
soranambule saw her as a thin person. According to other witnesses,
whose memory is more trustworthy, the girl said " stout " and not
" thin," her description corresponding to the lady's appearance before
she was wasted with disease. All the evidence being taken into
consideration, there is no doubt whatever that the door of the room
was opened immediately after the first sitting. Neither in his written,
nor in his oral, replies did the doctor seem to recollect what must,

OCT., 185W.J A Case of ''Spirit" Identity.

nevertheless, have been latent in his memory : the wardrobe of the
deceased was given away, witli the exception of two dresses, which
were left in the room. He called this circumstance to mind at a visit
paid to him on January 9th, 1897, after the caller had had an inter-
view with Dona Maria Freitas. On this occasion he stated that Dona
Angelica's wearing apparel had all been put into one room and had
afterwards been sent away by persons of the family, two light-coloured
cotton dresses remaining, which it was intended to give to the
servants. Dona Julia had a superstitious dread of articles of clothing
that had belonged to a dead person. He added— and this observation
of his has great weight — that they were not in good circumstances at
the time and could with difficulty defray the heavy funeral expenses.
This being the case, they certainly would not have left the money in
the pocket if they had known it was there.

Mr. Edward Silva, who was next interrogated, is a native of
Gibraltar, and therefore a British subject, who is more familiar with
the Spanish than with the English tongue. As an engineer of mines
and fortifications, he was formerly employed in the service of the
Sultan of Morocco ; but soon after coming to Brazil, he began to
exerc se the profession of magnetic healer, in which he has lately
acquired great notoriety. It would be irrelevant to discuss here how
far his method of treatment is justified by success. It is sufficient to
say that he has great faith in his own powers and that his very
positive personality is characterised by much apparent candour.
Nevertheless, he also seemed to think that Senr. Meyer's account was
a reliable one, and in reply to inquiries, he wrote on June 3rd, 1896,
asserting its correctness, and adding some details relative to the
manner 111 which the seance began. The contents of his letter may
be thus condensed : —

With the exception of Dr. Vidigal's address, which should have been
No. 2, Ahtmeda Triumpho, the account published in the Revue Spirite is
quite correct. Mr. Silva was requested by the doctor's mother-in-law to
mesmerise the girl so that they might learn what certain workpeople at her
hacienda were doing. To Mr. Silva's surprise, the girl replied as if to the
interrogations of another person. Commanded to say why she did not
answer his questions, she declared that she was conversing with her deceased
father, who in his lifetime Lad been a blind man. The latter, she said,
desired to shake hands with Mr. Silva, to whom he was grateful for having
induced the trance and thus afforded the means of communication. The
somnambule explained that Mr. Silva was to place his right hand in hers,
and on doing so, she also held out her left as if to her father, and both hands
were then shaken simultaneously.

After this Mr. Silva desisted from asking his own questions, and for an

288 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 18!>8.

hour or so studied the unexpected manifestation. What he then observed
is narrated in the Revue Spirite.

At the personal interview, Mr. Edward Silva, after premising that
his memory of the occurrence had been somewhat impaired by time,
endeavoured to furnish such particulars as he was still quite sure of.
His manner was earnest, and he was professedly cautious in his state-
ments. He asserted that his daughter Amalia was present with him
at the experiment, and that she recollected the details of the case
better than he did. Having made his own declaration, he called in
the young lady, who was allowed to give her version of the story
independently. From the notes taken at this cross-examination, the
following depositions were drawn up, which were sent to the witnesses
for their approval and signature : —

The account given in the Revue Spirite of my experiment with the girl
Francisca at the house of Dr. Orencio Vidigal is substantially in accordance
with my recollection of the occurrence.

On that occasion I had called with my daughter at Dr. Vidigal's, but did
not find him at home. His wife, Dona Julia, and her mother, Dona Maria
Freitas, were, however, present. (I must here mention that my acquain-
tance with this family was formed after the death of Dr. Vidigal's mother,
of whose personal appearance and habits I was totally ignorant.) It was
Dona Maria Freitas who requested me to mesmerise Francisca, and as I was
anxious at the time to discover some good somnambule, I very willingly con-
sented to do so. The lady wished to know how matters were going on at a
plantation (fazetida), where some workmen were employed by her.

The girl became deeply somnambulised, and as she made an ear-trumpet
of her hand and seemed to ask for a repetition of questions, I thought at
first she had some difficulty in hearing me. I soon found, however, that she
believed herself to be in communication with her dead father, who, through
the intermedium of his daughter, desired to shake hands with me in the
manner described in my letter of June 3rd.

Either Dona Julia, or Dona Maria, telephoned for Dr. Vidigal, who was
at a chemist's in the neighbourhood, and he soon arrived accompanied by
Dr. Telles, a friend of his. Dr. Vidigal put questions to Francisca ; the
girl, however, professed not to hear him, asserting that I was the only person
present. She became aware of the doctor's vicinity only after I had made
magnetic passes from her to him, and thus established a connection between
them.

The proof of spirit identity related in the Rewie Spirite certainly came
on this first occasion, and it is almost as certain that the girl, who belonged
to the peasant class and came from a country place in Spain, had never
before been experimented with in such a manner. She declared that she
saw beautiful sights. There were many bright faces in a bright place, and
many dark faces in a dark place. She did not wish to be awaked. In giving
the characteristics of the lady seen clairvoyantly, she described her as having

OCT., 1898.] A Cave of " Spirit" Identity. 289

black hair ; but I cannot now recall the other particulars mentioned in her
description. I have au idea that, in referring to the money contained in the
dress pocket, Francisca spoke of the pocket as being stitched together ; but
of this I am not sure. She directed that the money should be delivered to
Dr. Vidigal's father.

Of this, her first trance, she retained no recollection after waking. On
the occasion of the second experiment, however, I suggested that she should
remember what had occurred.

I remember that, when the ladies returned from the room with their
confirmation of the message given through the little somnarnbule, it was
mentioned that there had been difficulty in opening the door.

There was, of course, at Dr. Vidigal's, a desire to witness more of these
phenomena, and, perhaps, a tendency to experiment with too much fre-
quency ; but the girl's mother, when she heard that her daughter was
holding communication with the dead, took the alarm and expressed her
fear that Francisca would " lose the efficacy of the waters of baptism (per-
diese lasaguas del hautismo)." This was, I believe, the principal reason why
Francisca soon after left Dr. Vidigal's service.

(Signed) EDWARD SILVA.

17, Alameda Nothmann, San Paulo, August 16th, 1896.

In answer to an inquiry, the witness adds : —

The dress where the money was found was left in the room, and was
never inspected by me.

(Signed) EDWARD SILVA.

I was with my father at Dr. Vidigal's on the day on which Francisca was
magnetised for the first time. This girl, who at that period might have been
about ten or eleven years of age, was a little simpleton when in her normal
state.

There were present with me on that occasion Dona Maria Freitas, Dr.
Vidigal's mother-in-law ; Dona Julia, his wife ; Dr. Vidigal himself, with
his father and his cousin ; a friend of his called Dr. Telles, and a chemist.
Dr. Vidigal and others came from the chemist's shop after they had been
called by telephone. I recollect that the child was magnetised at the request
of Dona Maria Freitas ; but, as at that moment I was engaged in conversa-
tion, I cannot say what reason she had for making it. I merely supposed
that the experiment was being tried in order to see whether the girl was a
somnambule.

Once magnetised, Francisca neither recognised, nor heard, any of the
persons present except my father. She declared that she was alone with
him and continued in this isolation up to the moment in which a rapport was
established between her and Dr. Vidigal by means of magnetic passes. In
this somnambulic condition she asserted that she beheld God and glory, that
she distinguished a hand resting on my father's shoulder and that, placed
on his head, she saw a crown. No such crown was perceptible to her on the
head of Dr. Vidigal. She described the lady of her vision as dressed in
black with a veil of the same color. She [the lady] was full-bodied, of

290 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Ocr., 1898.

medium stature, and had black hair. (I afterwards saw a photograph of
Dr. Vidigal's mother, in which she is, in fact, represented as a stout person.)
The communicator declared that she was much pleased with her daughter-in-
law, and she expresed a desire to shake hands both with her and her son
through the intermedium of Francisca. She advised them, moreover, to
desist from their intention of giving the name Diaulas to their little son,
warning them that, if they did so, the child would die. (Dr. Vidigal and
his wife did not follow this advice, and the child died a few days after it was
christened.) She was contented and desired nothing for herself. Dr.
Vidigal alluded to the troubles he had to bear in life, and asked her to take
him so that he might be with her ; but he was told in reply that he must be
resigned inasmuch as he had yet duties to fulfil towards his family. I
recollect how in the same manner the communication came that in the room
of the deceased lady, and behind the door of this room, there was a light-
coloured cotton dress with the pocket stitched together. Inside this pocket
would be found a certain sum of money, which had been put there for
security. Such was the drift of the message.

Tt remained to verify this information about facts that the medium must
have ignored completely. I went with Dona Julia to the room, and we
opened the door ; but I do not remember whether we encountered any
difficulty in so doing. On our entering the apartment we saw several
articles of clothing hanging on the wall ; behind the door, however, we dis-
covered only the light-coloured cotton dress mentioned by the somnambule,
and inside the dress pocket, which was sewn together with needle and
thread, we found the exact sum which had been announced. I can guarantee
that the occurrence took place in this wise, although I no longer recollect
whether the amount was, or not, that of 75 milreis, as the other witnesses

affirm- (Signed) AMALIA SILVA.

August 16th, 1890.

Both Mr. Silva and his daughter seemed to be much struck with
the hand-shaking. Dona Amalia thought it necessary to append the
following postscript to her deposition : —

I also recollect the girl somnambule saying that her deceased father
professed himself well pleased with my father for having induced in her the
conditions which enabled him to communicate. He desired to shake hands
with my father. The latter stretched out his hand, but the girl said her
father told her that it could not be grasped in that manner. It could be
done only through her intermedium. She was to extend her hand in his
stead. In this way both her arms were seen by me to be strongly shaken.

(Signed) AMALIA SILVA.

Dona Julia, the wife of Dr. Vidigal, was next interrogated : —

She asserted that Mr. Silva and Dona Amalia were right in saying that

the message from the doctor's mother wa.s outlined the first time that

Francisca was hypnotised. She remembered calling her husband from the

chemist's. Her mother, her father-in-law, her husband's cousin, and his

OCT., 18»8.] A Citae of "Spirit" Identity. 291

friend Dr. Tolles were ulso present.* She thought the girl spoke of the dress
as a cotton dress, and of the pocket as being stitched together ; but she did
not recollect whether mention was made of the colour of the dress. In
common with many Brazilian ladies, she had a nervous dread of going into
an apartment where a death had occurred, and the room in which the dress
was hanging had not been entered by her since the decease of her mother-
in-law. It was only after the message had been received that she went to
the room with Dona Amalia. No other persons accompanied them on this
occasion. The door was opened with much difficulty. The witness virtually
confirmed the evidence of the others relative to the discovery of the money
in the pocket. In answer to other questions, she said that the only likeness
of her mother-in-law that existed at the time of the hypnotic experimentation
was a photograph which was in her father-in-law's keeping. There was no
possibility whatever that Francisca could have obtained a sight of this.
Subsequently an enlarged portrait, taken from the photograph, was hung up
in the front apartment of Dr. Vidigal's house. It represents a lady with
black hair, who could by no means be described as thin, although part of her
apparent stoutness might be attributed to the style of dress worn by her
when she was taken.

Dona Julia replied to the questions that were put to her simply
and directly. Her verbal deposition, reproduced from notes, is
valuable ; but of the four witnesses who were first examined Dona
Amalia must be considered the most reliable, for the reason that her
memory was evidently more retentive of the facts of the case than
that of the others.

It has been mentioned above that there was an unavoidable
interruption of some months before these inquiries were continued.
At the interview which at length took place with Dona Maria Freitas
it was found that, in accordance with the description given of her by
her friends, she was a lady endowed with more independence of
character and vigour of understanding than the generality of her
countrywomen. Her statement, which is, therefore, all the more
trustworthy, was drawn up at the hacienda where she lives, the usual
precautions being taken to ensure accuracy.

I was present when the girl Francisca was somnambulised by Dr.
Eduardo Silva. This child was the sister of an employ^ of the health
department, who recommended her to Dr. Orencio Vidigal as a servant. In
the normal state, however, she was of limited intelligence and could neither
read nor write. Before she was hired in my son-in-law's family, she had
already left the emigration depot ; but she had, in fact, been only a very
short time in Brazil.

It was at my request that Francisca was magnetised, for I wished to

* At the time of the first visit to San Paulo both Dr. Vidigal's cousin and the
chemist were dead. According to Dona. Julia the latter was not present at this sitting.

292 Journal of Society for Psychical liesearck. [OCT., ist)8.

know, if it were possible, what was going on at my hacienda. As the other
witnesses relate, the little somnambule struck out into another path,
describing scenes quite foreign [to the subject of] our thoughts. "A beauti-
ful door [gate ?] is opening. Oh, what a beautiful door ! " She afterwards
declared that she saw Dr. Vidigal's mother, and she gave some message for
his father which I can no longer call to mind. I recollect very well, how-
ever, the shaking of hands, and the [somnambulic] utterances faithfully
reported by Dona Anialia, for Francisca gave an exact description of the
deceased Dona Angelica. The somnambule said that she saw a tall stout
lady with black hair. She said, moreover, that [the lady] was dressed in
black and wore a black veil, this being, indeed, the costume in which the
latter had been buried. Francisca also spoke of Dr. Yidigal's little son,
saying that the doctor's mother did not want them to call him Diaulas, and
[warning them] that, if they gave him that name, the child would die. (The
child did, in fact, die after the baptism.)

The sitting began in the presence of three or four persons only ; later on
it was better attended, Dr. Orencio arriving with Dr. Theodomiro Telles and
others. At first my son-in-law did not approve of this magnetisation of the
servant ; but, in view of the revelations made by her, he at length became
interested.

I did not remain till the termination of this sitting, and consequently I
was not present at the finding of the money in the dress. I remember that
on the occasion a light-coloured cotton dress was spoken of.

As to Senr. Eduardo Silva, it is certain that I knew him shortly before
the death of Dona Angelica ; but it is also certain that he had no knowledge
whatever of that lady, and was, therefore, not able to transmit mentally or
verbally the ideas [which were] expressed by the somnambule in describing
the pliiinii/iii- of the deceased person.

Francisca herself finally refused to sit, declaring that her father did not
want her to continue. It was then that her mother withdrew her from Dr.
Vidigal's house.

(Signed) MARIA RANGEL DE FKEITAS.

Fazenda Chave Amaro, January 6th, 1897.

Another interesting circumstance is brought to light in the fore-
going deposition : it seems that Francisca described the very costume
in which Dona Angelica was buried. On the other hand, it was dis-
appointing to find that Dona Maria Freitas had not directly witnessed
the discovery of the money in the pocket. She had, of course, been
informed of the incident immediately after its occurrence, and so far
was able to corroborate the assertions of the others respecting what is
the really important event of the sitting. Some minor particulars
bearing on the case were also furnished by this deponent : The death-
chamber had formerly been Dr. Vidigal's room, to which, it seems,
Dona Angelica had been moved, either before, or during, her last ill-
ness. The clothes belonging to the deceased were, with the exception

OCT., i«i8.] A Case of " Spirit" Identity. 293

of two dresses, given away after her death (see Dr. Vidigal's evi-
dence). Dona Maria Freitas was inclined to think that at the time
of the first sitting Francisca had been in the house some two or three
days ; but of this she was not quite sure. The girl in her ordinary
state of consciousness was exceedingly dull arid childish. In her
simple admiration she would touch the telephone, examine the carpet,
and pass her fingers over the pattern of the wall-paper. She was fond
of little children, but could not be trusted to take care of them.
With regard to Dona Angelica's personal appearance in her lifetime,
she was tall and very stout, and even at the time of her last illness
had not one white hair. The portrait hanging in Dr. Vidigal's house
represents her as she was when she was younger.

Dona Maria Freitas's statement was afterwards read to Dr.
Vidigal, who declared it to be correct in all but one detail of slight
importance : Francisca's brother was employed in the emigration depot
and not in the health department.

Four of the preceding witnesses, Mr. Silva and Donas Amalia,
Julia, and Maria Freitas, agree in saying that Dr. Theodomiro Telles
was present on the occasion of the first experiment. His own verbal
declaration made on February 13th, 1898, that he had attended only
the second sitting, was therefore a surprise. Dr. Orencio, however,
had told him the next day after the first experiment that the somnam-
bule had announced the existence in a pocket of money which was
subsequently found there. Dr. Telles considered Mr. Silva to be a
very good operator ; but when he himself was present, he witnessed
nothing more than the ordinary hypnotic phenomena. This assertion
of his probably means that he saw nothing that exceeded the bounds of
hypnotic possibilities, for the second sitting, like the first, was of the
nature of a spiritistic seance, the girl again declaring herself to be in
communication with her dead father.

In the obituary of the Diario Official of San Paulo for the 20th of
June, 1893, among the names of those who were buried on the 17th
of that month, the following notice is published : —

Angelica da Costa Carvalho Vidigal, (50 years, Brazilian, married : nervous
exhaustion. .

This confirms the date of the death as it is given by Dr. Vidigal.

Such is the evidence which is now obtainable for this proof of
"spirit" identity. If it is here presented with prolix repetitions, and
if prominence is given to trifling circumstances, it is in order that the
witnesses and their depositions may be appreciated at their just value.
To confine the narrative to essentials would be to lose sight of certain
discrepancies which must not be thus smoothed over. Though not

294 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., is»8.

directly asserted, it is apparent from the above statements that there
was a marked difference in intelligence between Francisca's normal
personality and the trance personage brought to the surface by Mr.
Silvu. The one was childish and simple-minded in the extreme ; the
other was evidently characterised by vivacity and was the vehicle for
some very sensible advice to Dr. Vidigal. This first trance induced in
an ignorant country child bears an interesting likeness to that of other
somnambules who have been better studied. With the same activity
of the visual centres, she sees a beautiful gate or door ; then, possibly
drawing upon her remembrance of the imagery in Catholic churches,
she beholds God and His glory — there peer upon her bright faces arid
dark faces — also a crown is on the head and a hand on the shoulder of
Mr. Silva, who was, perhaps, revered by her as a man endowed with
mysterious powers. Francisca had recourse to the old excuse for not
giving some information which was very likely beyond her ken : there
were some things, she said, which it was not permitted to tell. It may
be noticed that the performance of hand-shaking was rather unnatural
in the case of Dr. Vidigal and Dona Julia. After a separation, a
Brazilian mother embraces her son and her daughter-in-law ; she does
not usually shake hands with them. The impulse to salute them may
have proceeded from the outside influence ; but the manner of salutation
was probably chosen by Francisca, who, although entranced, was, it
may be supposed, still mindful of her position as a servant. The
Diaulas incident likewise tinds parallels in similar experiences else-
where. If it is anything more than a chance hit, it would indicate some
slight prescience on the part of the trance personage, or some somnam-
bulic perception of the state of the child's health and, perhaps, of the
fixed resolve of the parents to call their little son by that name. Had
the child been christened Carlos or Henrique, its fate would, no doubt,
have been the same. It is tolerably well proved that neither Mr.
Silva, nor his sujet, had any previous knowledge of the personal
appearance and habits of Dona Angelica. But Dr. Vidigal, who knew
of both, was put en rapport with her. Thought-transference from his
mind was, of course, possible as long as Francisca confined herself to a
description of the physique, the burial costume and the personal
peculiarities of the deceased lady. It was when she mentioned the
exact sum of money sewn up in the pocket, and pointed out the exact
locality where it would be found that it became apparent that there
was some other source of information. This one instance of the
communication of knowledge belonging exclusively to a dead person
reflects back on the other phenomena of the sitting and makes it more
probable that they also were derived, at least in part, from the same

OCT., 1898.] Correspondence. 295

discarnate intelligence. In conclusion, it may be remarked that in the
latter part of the trance Dona Angelica's personality seems to have
stood out with some relief, so much so that the main incident of the
sitting is more plausibly attributed to her action than to mere clair-
voyant perception on the part of the somnambule.

OBITUARY.

LT.-COL. J. HARTLEY.

The late Joseph Hartley, LL.D., whose death took place at his
residence in Kent very suddenly on July 12fch, had always taken deep
interest in the subjects treated of by our Society. He succeeded his
father in the headship of a commercial company in Leeds, which he
consolidated and formed, and was educated, rather late in life, at St.
John's College, Cambridge, where he proceeded to the degree of LL.D.
He was also a barrister of the Inner Temple, and, for many years,
served in the 4th W. York Regiment of Militia, as it was then called,
as Captain, Major, and Hon. Lt.-Colonel. He was, also, an active
Magistrate for Kent and the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was a
very keen and acute man of business, and had fulfilled so many and
various duties, that he was able to treat with shrewdness and discre-
tion the many difficult questions put before our Society. He was the
very last man to take a credulous view of any phenomena put before
him, whilst his mind was quite open to conviction. He attended to
his duties on the Council with diligence and discretion, and the Society
has lost in him one of those members, eminent for common sense, who
are so necessary to its welfare.

CORRESPONDENCE.

[The Editor is not. responsible for opinions expressed by Correspondents.']

"FACES IN THE DAKK."
(To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.)

SIR, — My experience of faces in the dark is almost exactly that of
" Margaret Deland," except that I scarcely ever see only part of a thing.
The faces I see are usually more vivid than nature when they flash suddenly
upon me, absolutely full of life and movement. But they not unfrequently
form before my eyes. In this case the material they are, so to speak, moulded
in is the vague light impressions which float before one's closed eyelids.
These float together, mass themselves, and turn into a face, which may be
grotesque, but always possesses vividness of expression. They are always
new faces, never those of my friends. But they are unlike those which flash
upon me in not being vividly lighted as the sudden ones are. They always

296 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1H98.

seem to retain, while they last, the "light-dust" charaQter of the material
they are made of.

Like Mrs. C. H. Stone, I have tried cultivating this power. I have
found that by exerting the will I can produce simple forms before my eyes,
and lately I have also been able to produce colours to a certain extent.
Yellowish red and green come most easily, but I can now also see rose and
blue by an effort. When T see figures or faces — which at present I have not
been able to do by will — the figures are about the size of a full length figure
in a carte de visite photograph, the faces sometimes those of a cabinet
vignette photograph, now and then life size.

I sometimes have the sense while observing these phenomena that there
is a brilliant light somewhere near gradually increasing in brightness. This
is so present to my conciousness that I have sometimes opened my eyes
expecting to find daylight, and opened them on darkness.

I am a very keen visualiser, and T have sometimes had the sensation of
imaginary faces, etc., visualised before me without any corresponding
impression on my eyes. I imagine that these two classes of sensation
correspond to the different kinds of " vision " described as the experience of
St. Teresa. M BRAMETON.

SPIRITUALISM AND SPIRIT IDENTITY.
(To the Editor of the JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOU PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.)

SIR, — I should like to correct a misconception of the view I submitted in
the June Journal. Mr. Schiller remarks that I "can conceive the empirical
personality as surviving ' death,' but not as maintaining itself in its post
mortem existence." And he supposes this position to be the same as that of
the Reincarnationist, Cebes, in the Phtedo, that the soul may wear out
many bodies, but eventually itself perish. They have only this much in
common, that, as successive incarnations are successive ' empirical personali-
ties,' no reincarnationist can conceive the relatively permanent individuality
as a mere survival of one of its transient expressions. Our positive evidence
is necessarily confined to the fact of a memorial prolongation of consciousness.
Neither that evidence, nor my view of its significance, has any connection
with the larger doubt of Cebes, which regards the ultimate value or fate of an
individuality assumed to be inclusive of many distinct lives, or segregated
continua of experience.

By the ' empirical personality ' I understand generally the determined
self, self- reference to, or self-position in, an environment or ' world.' This
correlation implies, that any new environment must be ejnsdem generis with
the old, if the personal consciousness is to find itself connectedly in both,
that is, to identify both as comprised in one continuum of experience. In
any supposition we make of a new world of relation, we must include that of
discrete deepening, or expansion, of the ' psychological constitution ' of a
self which is to be conscious of the unity of its experience in both relations.
Either the environment cannot be wholly new, if with our definitely
determined psychological constitution we are to ' survive ' in it at all ; or there
must be a new- psychological adaptation. In short, of an ' other ' life our

OCT., i8«>8.] Correspondence. 297

evidence gives, and can give, no information whatever. Of its identifiable
personalities we must say, in the words of a French writer : the only
revenants are the tton allants.

The view which I wished to suggest so far agrees with M. D'Assier's
that it recognises the attachment of the post-mortem memorial consciousness
— the only consciousness we can get at in the evidence — to the earthly life,
and sees in it a mere temporary and evanescent survival of the latter. But
the French Positivist thinks this 'posthumous humanity' is all ; and there T
part company with him. For I conceive the individual life — pending trans-
cendent development— as a cycle of states, of great days and nights, or
objective and subjective periods, according to what I believe to be universal
analogy. That indrawal of consciousness does not ensue immediately and
completely upon physical death, at least when that is at all 'premature,' is
also quite in agreement with our frequent experience of the difficulty of
getting to sleep, and it is just this interval of increasing lassitude and
incoherence with which our evidence of ' spirit identity ' is concerned.

Convinced of the unity of process, we shall not suppose it to be unique on
one scale of representation, but shall find clues to all our thought of the
invisible in what we already see and know.

Though rejecting M. D'Assier's conclusion, that individuality itself
survives only as a decaying remnant of the earthly empirical consciousness,
I must urge that it is the readiest apparent explanation of the gradual
failure of the identifying evidence, and that that evidence, of itself, only
pushes materialism a step back, compelling it to recognise a temporarily
surviving extract from the physical organisation. And I believe we should
find, were our facts once generally admitted, that the Materialist and the
Positivist would immediately take up M. D'Assier's position. The evidence
does not really help us to the proof of immortality ; it may be said even to
embarrass that conviction seriously, until explained by one or other of
hypotheses which are as little subject to immediate verification as the specula-
tions of Plato. Knowing nothing of post-mortem consciousness, faith in
immortality retains all the force of doctrinal and philosophical considerations,
and of authoritative tradition. But recognition of what may be called the
ghost-consciousness tends to push all such ideas aside (that is for those who
place their reliance on external evidence), and the disintegrating character
of that merely memorial consciousness will seem to reduce the whole
conception of individual persistence to that of a mere after-glow of
terrestrial life. Mr. Schiller describes that view as 'odd and old.' Well, it
is not odd in the sense of being singular, because it is old, at least in the
essential particular, to a much wider extent than his not very relevant
reference to Plato's doubter would lead one to suppose. For in the earlier
Greek and Jewish conception, survival — in Hades and Sheol — was merely
memorial (" Man survived only as a shadow of himself. Intellectually and
morally he ended at death." See Article ' Eschatology,' Encyclopedia
Britannica). I cannot help thinking that those old notions originated in
' Spiritualistic ' experience. The only difference is that the modern
psychologist recognises, as the Greek did not, that a merely memorial
survival cannot endure. Q @^ MASSE Y

298 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [OCT., 1898.

CASES.

G. 257.

The following account has been sent by Colonel Kendal Coghill,
C.B., Associate S.P.B., who is intimately acquainted with the persons
concerned, and vouches for the accuracy of the circumstances. In a
letter of July 27th, 1898, he states that "the words of the mother's
letter were the ipsissima verba as I copied them myself." Owing, how-
ever, to the distress of the family at the death, he is unable to obtain
any further corroboration, and has also changed the names of the
persons concerned.

Cosheen, Castle Townshend, Co. Cork, July 21st, 1898.

Dr. Cecil, on retirement from the Army, settled down in the far north-
west of Canada. In May, 1898, he sent home to his sister's care in Ireland
two of his daughters — Amy, 16 ; and Helen, 14— for education. On 7th
June the children arrived. On 10th June, Helen having a bad headache,
remained in bed, and did not get up for dinner. Her sister went up from
the dinner-table to inquire what Helen would like, and found her dead. An
inquest reported the cause as arising from a tumourous growth on the brain.

Dr. Cecil's sister, not wishing to shock his family by an abrupt telegram,
wrote the bad news the following day, which should be, and was, received
a fortnight later. The child Helen was buried on 14th June, and the family
heard of the death nine days after. On 27th June, the mother wrote to the
surviving daughter, telling her that on the night of the 13th June, she had
seen Helen in a bad dream, who had said that "she was dead and could not
say how it had happened." She had told the father of it, and until the
letter from Ireland told the fact, they had forgotten all about the dream or
vision, when it at once recurred to the father's mind that it occurred the
night before the child was laid in her grave.

KENDAL COGHILL.

L. 1102. A« P" [A. B. 165.J

The following case was obtained for us by Professor Harlow S.
Gale, of the University of Minnesota.

Statement by Mrs. Castle.

Minneapolis, May, 1896.

On the first day of July, 1895, I had been taking an easy day about the
house, and was lying awake on the sofa about 4.30 p.m., when I felt a
sudden constricting sensation in my throat or about my neck. Seemed
as if a rope were drawn tightly about my neck.

I bathed my throat several times while dressing soon after.

I asked Mrs. Baldwin in the house if her throat pained her, or her stiff
high collar hurt her. Feared perhaps something had happened to Mr. Castle.

On Mr. Castle's return about 6 p.m. he greeted me with " I came near
getting in a bad fix this afternoon." I said "When?" And he replied,

OCT., 1898.] Cases. 299

"About an hour and a half ago." I then told him my experience, and he
told me that he had unexpectedly had an operation performed on his throat,
and afterwards, instead of remaining still, went down to a barber shop. There
he was suddenly seized with a terrible choking fit, and almost feared he was
going to die. It frightened the barbers greatly too. He sat there nearly
an hour before he was able to go.

I did not know anything of his having that operation performed.

I never had any such sensation before or since this one, but have had a
few incidents in connection with Mr. Castle which might be thought-
transference. CLARA B CASTLE.

Professor Gale notes : —

This shorter account and the following statements of Mr. Castle and
Mrs. Baldwin, were written out by me the day following a thorough dis-
cussion of the subject by them. After a further discussion they were
signed as correct. But Mrs. Castle has herself written out the attached
fuller account on her part. TT

Mr. Castle is of the firm of A. H. Castle and Co. , Pianos, Nicollet and
7th-streets, Minneapolis.

Minneapolis, May, 1896.

On the first day of last July (1895), while resting, late in the afternoon,
I suddenly experienced a constrictive sensation in my throat, accompanied
by a numbness, which increased for some time, and finally became so
distressing that I bathed and rubbed my throat several times — while
dressing, soon after it began — using also a mental treatment (in which I am
a firm believer). I could discover no cause within myself for such a
sensation, which was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. It
occurred to me that it might be due to some influence outside of myself,
and I thought of my husband with some anxiety, but I remember that the
fear for his safety was dissipated by the ludicrous thought that nothing but
a " hanging" would be an excuse for such symptoms. I thought also of a
friend (Mrs. Baldwin) who was stopping with me at the time. She had
gone out that afternoon, and was not in the house when this occurred.

A stiff collar had been the source of annoyance to her frequently, and I
thought of that as a possible cause for my discomfort, knowing that she was
wearing a freshly-laundried shirt waist at the time. She came in for a few
moments, to announce her intention of dining out, and I asked her if her
collar had made her uncomfortable that afternoon. She assured me to the
contrary, and I told her of my strange experience. We discussed it while
she was in, and soon after she left, Mr. Castle (my husband) came home to
dinner. Almost the first words he said were these (if I may be truthful
instead of scientific?), "I came near getting myself into a bad scrape
to-day." He then explained that he had been taking a treatment for his
throat, which was very severe, and the doctor had advised him to rest
awhile in his office before going out, but being pressed for time he had
concluded "to rest" in the barber's chair, and had gone a short distance

300 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Ocr., 1898.

to the shop. He had only just sat down in the chair, when he was attacked
by a violent paroxysm of choking and strangling. Ho was much alarmed,
as also were the barbers. I interrupted him to enquire with much
interest as to the time it occurred, and asked him if it were about 4.30.
After thinking a moment, he said, "Yes, it must have been about an hour
and a half ago." (It was then about six o'clock.)

I then related my experience to him, and although he was inclined
to be sceptical at first as to its telepathic origin, he at last admitted that
it must have been a case of thought-transference, since my symptoms
coincided exactly with his — barring the choking — which I did not feel. I
had no idea that he was going to the doctor's that day (the date of which,
by the way, is furnished by Mrs. Baldwin, who remembers it as the clay
before she left my house, and this city, for a visit to St. Cloud). The date
of her departure was August [July ?] 2nd, 1895.

(Mas.) CLARA B. CASTLK.

May 23rd, 1896.

N. B. — When Mrs. Baldwin came home that evening I told her the
" mystery " had been solved, and related Mr. Castle's experience.

C. B. C.
A. H. CASTLE.
Statement bi/ Mr. Castle.

On the afternoon of the first day of July, 1895, I unexpectedly had an
operation performed on my throat by Dr. Bell.

To allow for the passing off of the effects of amesthetie used in my
throat he told me to remain quiet awhile after the operation. But I thought

I could save time by sitting in the barber's chair, and so walked about

yards to a barber shop. There I was soon seized with a terrible choking
sensation which frightened the barber and myself very greatly. I remained
sitting there nearly an hour before I could go on.

On arriving home about 6 p.m., I told Mrs. Castle that I came near
getting in a bad fix. On her asking "When?", I said, "About an hour
and a half ago." She then described her sudden constricted sensation about
that same time, and of her telling Mrs. Baldwin of it.

This is the only time I have had such a sensation in my throat, but have
had some possible thought-transference experiences with Mrs. Castle before,
e.g., her starting three times to get me a glass of water during a conversa-
tion with me, and without my asking or giving any sign for it as far as I

know- A. H. CASTLK.

Statement by Mrs. Baldwin.

I remember Mrs. A. H. Castle's telling me on the afternoon of the
first day of July, 1895 (I remember the day on account of it being the day
I intended to start on a visit to St. Cloud), of her sudden and severe pain in
the throat and neck, and of her asking me if my neck hurt me, if perhaps
my stiff collar hurt me. Mrs. C. asked me this on my coming into the
house about 5 o'clock. KATE H. BALDWIN.

No. CLIII.— VOL. VIII. NOVEMBER, 1898.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS. PAGE

New Members and Associates 301

Meeting of the Council 302

Experiments in Thought-Transference . . . 302

Cases 308"

NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

ALLIN, REV. THOMAS, Donnington Rectory, Ledbury.

APPLEYARD, WALTER, Endcliffe Crescent, Sheffield.

DELL, REV. RUSSELL ST. JOHN, A.K.C., 207, Markhouse-road, Waltham-

stow, Essex.

Duncan, Harold M., Hyde Park-court, Albert-gate, S.W.
Faulkner, Miss A. A., Inglewood, Barnt Green, Worcestershire.
HALES, FRANK N., Trinity College, Cambridge.
LEIIMANN, Miss B. HOYT, 22, Walpurgis Strasse, Dresden.
MITCHELL, Miss, Ballynure, Grangecon, co. Wicklow, Ireland.
ROBINSON, GEORGE R., 31, James-street, Liverpool.
SANDERS, MRS., 33, Buckingham-palace-mansions, Grosvenor-gdns., S.W.
Sowrey, John, Tudor House, Lower King's-rd., Kingston-on-Thames.
STEPHENS, WILLIAM WALKER, Rosehall Lodge, Dalkeith-rd., Edinburgh.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

BANCROFT, Miss M., Haddonfield Training School, Haddon Field, N.J.

COMSTOCK, C. B., 34, West 25th-street, New York, N.Y.

CORTIS, Miss GRACE M., 126, West 70th-street, New York, N.Y.

CULIN, WILLIAM D., M.D., Parrish-street, Philadelphia, Pa.

DROWN, T. PICKERING, Framingham, Mass.

FITTS, WILLIAM B., Calumet Club, 267, Fifth-avenue, New York, N.Y.

POTTER, MRS. D. C. M., Supt. I.O.O.F. Home, Batesville, Arkansas.

SAWYER, EDWARD W., 6, Chester-street, Melrose, Mass.

STEWART, MRS. K. G., Hillsborough, 111.

VISCHER, CARL V., M.D., 1,429, Poplar-street, Philadelphia, Pa.

302 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1898.

WHITE, H. LAURENCE, 75, Genesee-street, Utica, N.Y.
WILLIAMS, CHARLES R., Indianapolis News, Indianapolis, Ind.

MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held at the Society's Rooms, 19,
Buckingham Street, on October 7th. Dr. W. Leaf was voted to the
chair. There were also present, Dr. A. W. Barrett, Mr. F. W. H.
Myers, Mr. F. P*odrnore, Mr. Sydney C. Scott, Mr. H. Arthur Smith,
and Dr. Chas. Lloyd Tuckey.

The minutes of last meeting were read and signed as correct.

Three new Members and nine new Associates were elected ; and
the election of twelve new Associates of the American Branch was
recorded. Names and addresses are given above.

The Council recorded with regret the decease of Mrs. Scudamore,
one of the earliest Honorary Associates of the Society ; also of Mrs.
Murray-Aynsley, who had been a member of the Society for many
years ; and also of Lieut.-Col. J. Hartley, who had been a Member of
the Council since the year 1889.

Two presents to the Library were reported, for which a vote of
thanks was accorded to the donors.

Several other matters of business having been attended to, the
Council agreed that its next meeting should be on Friday, November
4th, at 4.30 p.m., at 19, Buckingham Street, W.C.

EXPERIMENTS IN THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE.

We are indebted to Professor A. P. Chattock of University College,
Bristol, for the records of several series of thought-transference experi-
ments, from which the following results are selected.

At a sitting at Harrow in September, 1897, the agents were
Professor Chattock and R. C. Clinker, and the percipient was E. B.
Wedmore. E. B. W. sat about three yards from the agents, a lamp
and table being between them.

Professor Chattock, writing to Dr. Hodgson under date of January
19th, 1898, says:—

The impromptu experiments of which I enclose copy seemed to show
existence of the real thing in some cases ; e.g., Nos. 1, 3 and 5. No. 5 is
interesting because while it was arranged that we were to think of a word of
three letters, R. C. C. only wrote down M. The two overlapping As, which
I remember E. B. W. said insisted on overlapping, though he tried to make
them separate, certainly suggest M. (see pp. 305-6).

Nov., 1898.] Experiment^ in Thought-Transference.

803

Professor Chattock says further in the same letter : —
R. C. 0. and I tried after these experiments to transmit the same draw-
ings at appointed times to E. B. W. in London, he from London, and I from
Bristol for a week, sending a different drawing each day, but the result was
complete failure. A second week of experiments under similar conditions
was equally unsuccessful. Proximity seems to be required for people in our
condition of mind. ... It occurs to me that the percipient should be
in a partially dazed state. In taking long sets of readings during which one
gets into a sort of vacant condition, I seem often able to anticipate what my
assistant is going to say. Is there any convenient way of keeping oneself in
such a condition ? I thought of watching a slowly revolving disc.

On January 23rd, 1898, Professor Chattock writes to Dr. Hodgson
thus : —

With regard to the drawings, they were made with two old students of
mine— the percipient belonging to an old Quaker family here, other members
of which have shown psychic tendencies. He and Mr. Clinker spent the
evening with me in some lodgings at Harrow, and it was quite a sudden
thought that we should try thought-transference experiments. To this, and
to the fact that we had become socially tuned with much talking and laugh-
ing, I fancy what little success we had is due. It has so often happened that
the first one or two trials in experiments of this kind show transference and
then fail. One gets self-conscious and excited. . . . The percipient
knew in each case what sort of a thing was to be drawn, e.g., a number of
three figures, a word of three letters, three musical notes, name of city, etc.
I enclose a little set of three experiments between Mr. Wedmore
and his brother made in September, 1897, which may interest you. Here
E. B. W. was the agent. Note the success in the first only.

The experiments referred to are shown on p. 307.

On April 24th, 1898, Professor Chattock again writes to Dr.
Hodgson thus : —

I am sending you the accounts of a few more experiments in telepathy,
as you were interested in those I sent before. Those by the brothers
Wedmore are described in the letter I enclose.

The following record is enclosed in Professor Chattock's letter : —

Agent : E. B. W.

Percipient : R. W.

CARD DEVELOPED IN AGENT'S MIND.

CAKD DEVELOPED IN PERCIPIENT'S MIND.

8 of hearts.
King of clubs.
Queen of hearts.
1 of diamonds.
3 of spades (clubs).

9 of hearts.
King of diamonds (clubs).
Queen of hearts.
1 of spades.
3 of spades (clubs).

304 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1898.

Interruption to get paper for record.

7 of clubs.
2 of hearts.

King of diamonds.
5 of clubs.

Stopped altogether.

The words in brackets were thought of first, but not mentioned until
results were compared.

In the letter referred to, Mr. E. B. \Vedmore says : —

Just after 12 p.m., December 31st [1897], we got some splendid results
with playing-cards. . . . We tried five in succession. We were both
sitting in bed as indicated approximately. (A sketch is enclosed showing
two beds with a screen between). I then got up and wrote the list down.
We afterwards tried three more, but without any success. I made my mind
vacant, and then searched it as it were, and out of the mist would develop
almost at once a playing-card. My brother doing the same saw a card
develop in the same way. The funny thing is that I saw my cards as though
they were coming from a point rather low down, a little to the right, so that
the top of the card was tilted back, and the side tilted somewhat towards my
brother, and he saw them almost edgeways and also tilted back, almost ;is
though we had each been looking from our respective positions at the same
solid object. It was quite by an after-thought that I enquired how he saw
the cards. We tried cards two or three other evenings but without success ;
we found we could think of cards much too readily.

We had some very curious successes with numbers. I thought of 197 and
my brother immediately said the same and thought of the same kind of 9.
Again (being rather tired), I thought of 497 but could only imagine the
numbers one at a time, and did so taking them in rotation. My brother said
749 and saw the 7 separately from the others. We had also several partial
successes always occurring almost immediately after or before complete
successes.

One day at tea my second sister (Margaret) and I were on the same side
of the table but separated. I told her of our other experiments and she
thought of five cards in succession. I got, first wrong, second right, third
number slightly wrong, fourth right (immediately), fifth wrong. In each
case only one attempt was made. All correct results have been obtained
almost immediately and clearly. After tea we tried five more with similar
results ; two right, one partial, two wrong. My sister could not receive
from me and I cannot do so from my brother. During above attempt, after
the second case we were interrupted, so I strided about determined not to
think of a card, and studied the pattern of the carpet, etc., till my sister was
ready. That time was a complete success.

These experiments are interesting, showing, as Professor Ohattock
says, "the existence of the real thing in some cases." The success,
though partial and uncertain, should encourage other experirnentors.

Nov., i8»8.] Experiments in Thought-Transference.

305

Agents: PROF. CHATTOCK and R. C. CLINKER. Percipient: E. B. WKDMORK.

All in same room at Harrow, September, 1897. E. B. W. about 3 yards from agents
with lamp and table between.

No. 1.

ORIGINAL.

First Sitting.

Remarks: "He's got it.''
PROF. C.

RKPRODUCTONS.

Obtained while the drawing was
being made. The middle line was
curved to show perspective as the
'< outline suggested a toilet tidy.
This and all further outlines and numbers
were seen light on a dark background.

E. B. W.

No. 2.

REPRODUCTIONS.

ORIGINAL.

306 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. LNov., 1898.

Agents: PROF. CHATTOCK and R. C. CLINKER. Percipient: E. B. WEDMORE.

First Sitting.
No. 3. ORIGINAL. REPRODUCTION.

131

181 OR 191

REP.

No. 4.

ORIG.

397 ou 5 204

seen first.

257

181 -4- 2

Clinker thought of 181 about half time.

REP.

A DAS

No. 5.

ORIG.

Appeared like two As over-
l\/\ lapping which shifted rela-
/•Jf "\ lively to one another.

Should have been three letters.

We had arranged to have three

letters which consequently I

was expecting to see.

E. B. W.

Jtixtxrliances otoing to tea being laid.

No. G.

OHIG.

REP.

Thought of these

and then suggested

we should try three

musical notes.

No. 7.

ORIG.

REP.

HARROGATE

OK AXMINSTER.

Nov., 1898.] Experiments in Thought- Transference.

307

Agent : E. B. WEDMORK. Percipient : R. WEDMOHE. September, 1897.

(Second sitting of the above.)
Three attempts only as below. Both in same room, London, S.W.

ORIGINAL.

REPRODUCTION.

No. 1. R. W.

Drawn in about \\ minutes after
sitting commenced.

ORIG.

REP.

No. 2. R. W.

Drawn almost immediately and before

agent had settled in what manner to

consider the contents of square.

GRIG.

REP.

No. 3. R.W.

Had to wait several minutes
to get this.

308 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., isus.

CASES.

L. 1103. A* P*

The following case was written down next day and sent to me in
French by a scientific friend, who prefers that the narrative should
be anonymous. He has had other experiences pointing to thought-
transference. The value of the coincidence is more than doubled by
the fact that the apprehension was felt also — independently so far as
any ordinary communication went — by the percipient's sister.

F. W. H. M.

On Friday, December 10th, 1897, at about 10.35 p.m., being alone and
at work in my library, I began to think, without any reason, that there had
been a fire at the Opera. My wife and daughter had gone off to the Opera
at 8 ; I had not been able to accompany them. The impression was so
strong that I wrote + F [Feu !] on the cover of a book which ]ay near me.
A few instants later, wishing to emphasise this presentiment, I wrote " Att "
(for attention), "Fire!" I enclose what I wrote. [Fragment of book-cover
sent herewith with the words mentioned.] I did not, however, feel anxious ;
but said to myself, "There has been no great fire at the Opera, only an
alarm of tire."

At the same time, or rather 10 or 15 minutes later, at 10.55, my sister,
Mine. B., who lives in the same house, and whose bedroom is on the same
floor with my study, had an idea that my study was on fire. She was at the
moment on the point of getting into bed, but she came in deshabille to my
study door and put her hand on the handle to come in ; but then, telling
herself that her fear was absurd, she went back to bed. She tells me,
however, that she would nevertheless have come in, but that she was afraid
that I had someone with me in the room.

At 12.10, my wife and daughter came back from the theatre. They
instantly told me that there had been a sort of beginning of a conflagration.
1 said nothing, and they told me as follows : — Between 8.45 and 9, at the
end of the first act of the Maitres Chanteurs, a smell of burning and a light
smoke were perceived in the auditorium. My wife said to my daughter : " I
will go out and see what is the matter ; if I make a sign to you, follow me
at once, without saying a word or even waiting to put your cloak on." The
attendant whom she asked said that nothing was wrong. Nevertheless,
there was some emotion among the audience, and five or six persons in
the stalls got up and went away. The smoke came, no doubt, from
a stove.

Note that this is the first time that my wife ever left her seat in a theatre
from alarm of fire. It is the first time that I have ever been anxious about
fire in her absence ; and I do not suppose that I jot down my possible
presentiments more than five or six times in a year.

My sister has never before been anxious about fire in my room.

NOV., isas.] Cases. 301)

L. 1104.

These extracts were kindly copied out and sent us in the original
French by Sir Lawrence J. Jones, Bart., Associate S.P.R., who stayed
at Schloss Wildeck in 1897. There is a real interest,— although there
may not be the highest evidential quality, — in records of this kind,
written down in a serious spirit by a lady of high character and
intelligence, for her own satisfaction, and kept in private archives for
more than a century.

Extracts from the MS. of Madame Sophie d'Erlach, nee d'Effinger- Wildeck,
of ScJtloss Wildeck, Aaryau, Switzerland.

I was born November 16th, 1766. I had the misfortune to lose my
mother in early childhood. She died of small-pox in 1768, aged only 23
years.

One night (in 1771) I had a vision or a dream, which still lives in my
memory a though it were of yesterday. ... I was sleeping in rny grand-
mother's room in a little bed without curtains ; on account of my restlessness
a wooden rail had been put to prevent me from falling out. ... I dreamt
that a young and beautiful woman, surrounded by a supernatural light, came
up to me, removed the rail, seated herself on my bed and called me softly
by my Christian name. " Dear child," she said to me, " I have chosen the
time when you are asleep that I may not frighten you, to let you see
your mother. Look at my features which portraits will recall to your mind ;
you are destined to have many sorrows ; I am happy, I died young, whilst
you will survive those you love ; it will be your fate to mourn for them."
When she left me she kissed me and told me not to tell my grandmother of
her appearance. She added : " I shall see you once more, at the hour of your
death." So saying, she disappeared. I woke up with a start, my rail was
in its usual place, but I was so terrified that I took refuge in my grand-
mother's bed, without, however, telling her of my dream. My terror was
increased by seeing the excitement of the faithful spaniel, which had
followed in my mother's funeral procession. He was my companion, sleep-
ing at the foot of my bed ; his intelligence was extraordinary, and he took
part in all my amusements.

This prediction was so far fulfilled that Madame d'Erlach led a
very unhappy life and survived all her children and most of her
relations and intimate friends. She died in 1842.

The next extract is dated 1786.

Another relation, for whom I soon entertained a filial affection, was
Monsieur d'Erlach de Hindelbank. . . . His eldest son, colonel of the
Schomberg regiment of dragoons . . . had before served in the Swiss
Guard at Paris, where he had the good fortune to save the life of the Duke of
Castries at the risk of his own. This secured to him the support of this family
and an introduction into the best French society. It was whispered that the
Princess Charlotte of Lorraine had taken particular notice of him ; she had

310 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., isus.

wished to marry him rather than any other man, although he was a
Protestant. As she could not do so, she became a nun, and died abbess of
the noble and royal chapter of Remireinont. . . . The singular thing is
that the Princess in the habit of an abbess appeared to him one day at
Oberhofen, where he happened to be at the time, to bid him a last farewell.
Although he was far from being superstitious, this apparition made the more
vivid impression on him inasmuch as it corresponded with the day of her
death.

The subject of the following extract, under date of 1804, was
Madame de Montleart de S. Simon, " dame d' honneur chez Madame,"
at Versailles before the Revolution, afterwards one of the "dmign'-s."

On June 2nd my friend Madame de Montleart arrived at my house. She
was in the last stages of consumption . . . she breathed her last in my
arms on June 21st. . . . Un the 23rd she was buried in a spot she had
herself chosen, close to the castle. . . . An extraordinary circumstance,
difficult of explanation, was a dream which Madame de Montleart had several
times in succession, many years before coming to Wildeck ; a dream which
struck her so much that she made a note of it. She dreamt that she had
accompanied the royal family to the chapel at Versailles to attend mass, but
had not been able to tind a suitable seat. A prelate, seeing her embarrass-
ment, gave up his place to her, at the same time presenting her with a
mirror, and saying to her ''Believe me, madame, there only will you tind
rest." On looking at it she saw an <ild manor house and a landscape, which
were quite unknown to her. When she told me about this dream, she
added : "I have found the place, it is Wildeck, I recognised it immediately
upon my arrival ; be persuaded it is there I shall leave my earthly
tenement."

Another account of these dreams, from the same hand, states that
they took place twenty years before Madame de Montleart's arrival at
Wildeck.

The MS. containing these extracts is in the possession of the
Baroness von Effinger of Schloss Wildeck, great-granddaughter of the
writer. Schloss Wildeck has been the residence of the Effingers
since 1484.

L. 1105.

This case closely resembles a case already printed in Phantasms of
the Living (Vol. II., p. 211), where a gentleman, kept away from his
office by slight illness, is seen in that office by two other persons.

On Thursday, April 12th, 1888, I made an arrangement to meet Mr.
A. B. and the Rev. T. W. Lemon at the British Museum Reading Room at
a quarter to eleven the next morning, Friday (13th). But I caught a cold
on Thursday evening, and on Friday I was confined to bed with a feverish
catarrh, and I lay there fretting at not being able to keep the appointment,

Nov., 1808.] Cases. 311

and I fancied their presence at the Reading Room and their annoyance at
my absence.

1 heard subsequently from Mr. A. B. personally that he and the Rev.
T. W. Lemon had met at the Reading Room and had not been able to find
me, but that he had asked some officials, notably one named Ryan, for me,
and some habitues among the readers, notably a Miss O'Connell and a Mrs.
Salmon. Mr. A B. also said that Ryan and Mrs. Salmon had both told
him that they had seen me in the Reading Room walking around as if
seeking some one, just before he enquired of them.

A few days after that, I went to the Reading Room and saw Miss
O'Connell and Mrs. Salmon, when the latter in a jocular way said : " Is it
really you to-day or not ? " She was so much impressed by the peculiarity
of my appearance on the 13th, that for a long time she made the same
jocular query when I met her. Miss O'Connell was told of the event at the
time, and has repeatedly heard Mrs. Salmon and me refer to the incident.
By recent enquiry I find that Ryan is dead, but Mrs. Salmon and Miss
O'Connell are both still alive and in England.

W. WYNN WESTCOTT, M.B., D.P.H.

P.S. — I am asking the two ladies to read this and sign it if they agree to
the statement.

The two signatures are appended thus : —

The above is quite correct in every detail.

ELLEN SALMON.
THERESA J. O'CONNELL.

Mrs. Salmon has also written as follows : —

Mr. A. B. asked me if I had seen Dr. Westcott. I said, "Yes, about
five minutes ago, he is sitting where he usually sits." Mr. A. B. went to
the seat and came and told me Dr. Westcott was not there. I said, " Oh, he
must be, it's only a few minutes since I saw him sit down." I went myself.
He was not to be seen. I went to the man who takes the umbrellas and
said, "Have you seen Dr. Westcott ?" "Yes," he said, "he went into the
room about five minutes ago."
This is exactly what took place.

ELLEN SALMON.
January 24th, 1898.

Miss O'Connell lias also given her account of the incident as
follows : —

I perfectly remember on the occasion in question meeting Mr. A. B. at
the entrance to the Reading Room. He asked. me if I had seen Dr. West-
•cott come in, as T. W. Lemon was waiting to see him by appointment, and
I replied that I had not seen Dr. Westcott. About ten minutes later Mr.
A. B. came to me and said: "It is very queer, I have been four times
round the room and can see no sign of Dr. Westcott ; yet Mrs. Salmon says
she will take her Bible oath she saw him come into the room and go direct
to my seat. " Shortly after, Mr. A. B. went over to Dr. Westcott's residence

312 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1898.

to discover the reason of his absence, and the following morning told me
that he had found him in bed with a feverish cold, and very much worried
at not being able to keep his appointment. Mrs. Salmon was the more
surprised at having seen his astral form, as she has never studied these
matters in any way, and naturally thought it singular that she should be the
only one in the room to have seen Dr. Westcott's astral form.

THERESA J. O'CONNELL.
January 2Uh, 1898.

G. 258.

Under the title "A Good Case of Clairvoyance," a contribution
from Mr. John Lamont of Liverpool appeared in Light of January
16th, 1897. Through the kindness of Mr. Lamont, of Mr. John
Jobson, and of others who took part in the occurrences, some further-
first-hand evidence has been obtained, which is given below, in addition,
to the particulars furnished in the report in Light. There were some
discrepancies in dates in that report, due to its having been written
from memory, These have been cleared up. The following paragraphs
are from Mr. Lament's article in Light of the above date : —

By way of preface to the following narrative, let me say that three friends
— James Connell, James Oliver, and John Jobson. all then resident in
London, where Mr. Connell still resides — were in the habit of discussing the
probability or otherwise of life after death ; the two first named at that
time being sceptics.

Jobson removed to Liverpool, some time after which Connell and a few
friends formed a circle at Connell's house. At this time Oliver (who soon
afterwards died) was too weak to join the circle, but was present and heard
and saw what was gcing on, and said, sometimes in jest, sometimes in
earnest, that if there was a life after death he would come back and rattle
the planchette for them. (The reader is referred to a letter in Light, of
May 25th, 1895, bearing on the promise made by Oliver, entitled " A
Strange Story.")

Now for the facts. Mr. Connell had two children — Dan, who died some
years ago, and Kathleen, to whom this narrative more directly relates, and
who was very fond of Mr. Jobson, and was in the habit of sitting on his
knee and calling him her Daddy Jobson. Thus it will be seen that a close
intimacy existed between the child (whose pet name was Cathie) and Mr.
Jobson.

In the meantime, as I have said, Mr. and Mrs. Jobson removed to
Liverpool, where they were in the habit of attending Pembroke Baptist
Church, of which the Rev. Charles F. Aked is pastor ; but being interested
in Spiritualism, they came occasionally to the meetings at Daulby Hall,
where the Liverpool Society of Spiritualists hold their meetings, and Mr.
Jobson became influenced to write automatically. On Monday, November
30th, 1896, Mr. and Mrs. Jobson being present at a meeting of members at
Daulby Hall, Mrs. Rossbottom, a lady member of the society who is a

Nov., mis.] Cases. 313

clairvoyant, said to Mr. Jobson : ' ' There has been a little girl sitting on your
knee nearly all the evening." Mr. Jobson replied : " I don't know of any
little girl ; but I do know of a little boy, whom it might be ; " Mr. Jobson
thinking of his favourite, Dan, who he knew was in the spirit world, if there
was such a place.

Mrs. Rossbottom replied: " I did not see the face, as the back was
turned towards me, and the head rested on your shoulder with one arm round
your neck, but it looked to me to be a girl."

In a letter to Mr. E. T. Bennett written in February, 1897, Mr.
Jobson, whose address is 137, Hall Lane, Kensington, Liverpool,
says : —

Monday, November 30th [1896] I attended stance held at Daulby Hall,
at the close of which Mrs. Rossbottom told me about seeing the little girl,
of which the Light account is correct.

Mrs. Rossbottom also writes to Mr. E. T. Bennett in February,
1897 :—

194, Phythian Street, Liverpool.

DEAH SIR, — Being present at a meeting held in Daulby Hall, Daulby
Street, Liverpool, on November 30th [1896], sitting close to me was a gentle-
man whose name was not at that time known to me. I saw a little girl
sitting on his knee and told him of the fact. Mr. Jobson, whose name I
since learnt, shook his head, and he said he did not know any little girl
He added, if it were a little boy I might know it. I said, judging from the
hair and general appearance, I should take it to be a girl about six years old.
Mr. Jobson said something about the age of the little boy, which I did not
quite catch, but I gathered from his tone it was not satisfactory, so for the
time the matter dropped. Mr. John Lament was present at that meeting.
I also was present when Mrs. Chiswell and Mrs. Watson gave descriptions
of wreath, and name Cathie was given. Seeing the little girl was not
known, I said nothing of what I have written on page 3 [i.e., what follows.]
On reaching my own home and sitting quiet I saw a woman whose face was
covered with her hands in such grief, not tears. The little girl whom I had
seen about an hour before put her hand in mine and said : " Come to
Mamma, do come." Shaking my head doubtfully, I saw a bright and
beautiful spirit of a young woman draw the child to her and they vanished.
I know they are real on that side, and have much pleasure in sending my
version of the matter. I am not a public medium. Such [power] as I possess
is my greatest blessing, a pearl beyond price.

CHARLOTTE ROSSBOTTOM.

Mr. Jobson writes further in the letter above quoted : —
Monday, December 1st, at home, I sat down to see if I could get any
communication, when a spirit who often uses my hand wrote automatically
" Oliver is here, and wishes to give you a message." I then asked mentally,
"Are you here, Jim?" The reply came, "Yes, I wanted to tell you that
Cathie Connell is here. She has been here a fortnight."

314 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1898.

Mr. Lament remarks in Light in his article above quoted : —
This was news indeed, if true ; the Jobsons not having heard from the
Connells since Easter, when Cathie was in her usual health.

On Saturday, December 12th, Mr. and Mrs. Jobson were at Mr.
Lament's house, and expressed considerable anxiety about the message
that had been received. Mr. Lament thus reports in Light what
passed : —

I advised them to let the matter pass, .is there might be nothing in it,
and Jobson did not like to write to the Connells to inquire, lest he might be
making a fool of himself. But I asked : " Was this child in the habit of
sitting on your knee?" "Oh, yes," was the reply, "she was very fond of
me, and I of her, and I cannot but think that her parents would have
written to let us know if the child was dead. I don't know what to make of
this writing through my hand ; whether it is myself or some other force
that does it."

In the letter quoted above Mr. Jobson further says : —
Monday, December 14th, 189(5. Received by morning's post, after I had
gone to business (Mrs. Jobson taking the letter from postman), a letter
containing the news of Cathie's passing away. This was the letter sent by
Mrs. Connell. I attended stance at Daulby Hall on the evening of the
same day. Mrs. Watson heard the name of Cathie several times. After-
wards Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Chiswell saw a spirit come and place leaves on
my shoulder, as described in Liyht. When I got home from stance on same
night I thought I would try if I could get writing, to know why the spirit
had come to me at the stance. My hand wrote the message you have seen
in Liyld ; that being a verbatim account of all I received.

The following is Mr. Jobson's account of this as it appeared in Mr.
Lament's article in Liyht : —

I was at the meeting at Daulby Hall last Monday, and had, as you know,
the following description given me, but did not know till I got home that it
had any bearing on the passing away of dear little Cathie. (It was on this
day that Mrs. Jobson received Mrs. Council's letter, and Mr. Jobson being
at business went to the meeting at Daulby Hall before going home, hence his
ignorance of Cathie's passing away.) Two ladies, Mrs. S. S. Chiswell and
Mrs. Watson, both described a spirit as coming to me. They said : " She is
a beautiful young woman, dressed in spirit robes. She places a wreath of
ivy on your shoulder." At the close of the meeting I heard various
conjectures about the significance of the wreath being placed on my
shoulder. Some put one construction on it and some another, so I decided
when I got home to try automatic writing. Much to my surprise my hand
wrote: "I am here." I then asked mentally : "Can you tell me why you
placed the wreath on my shoulder ? I should like to know if it is symbolical
of anything that tends to good. Are you the spirit that placed the wreath
on me ? " My hand wrote : " Yes ; I am that spirit, and will tell you what

NOV., isjiK] Cades. 315

you wish to know. I placed the wreath on your shoulder to let you know
that we appreciate your sympathy on behalf of the parents of the dear
child you loved so well. We return our sincere thanks to you for all your
love to her and her dear brother Dan. They are both happy here, and know
that they are brother and sister. They will often visit you while you remain
in the earth-life, and will be sure to meet you when you come to the summer
land. They are very lovable children, and play with each other here." I
asked : " Can you tell me if it was Cathie whom the lady medium saw
sitting on my knee a few weeks asjo ?" " Yes ; it was she, and she was so
pleased that she had seen you. She often talks about you. I am her spirit
mother. No name can be given ; if I gave it you would not know it." I
asked: "Have you anything more to say to me?" "No; good-night."
" Will you visit me again ? " "Yes."

Mr. Lament concludes his article in Light by saying : —
This ends the narrative, but I ought to say that Cathie was six years and
four months old when she passed to the higher life.

Cathie Connell died on October 31st, 1896.

In reply to an enquiry as to whether the original messages had
been preserved, and in reply to some other queries, Mr. Jobson wrote
as follows under date November 3rd, 1897 : —

I will tell you how I know that the above date [1st December] is correct.
When first I found that I had the gift of automatic writing I used scraps of
paper which I threw away, but as I proceeded I thought that it would be as
well to keep the communications, if only to know whether the writing
improved in style as I went on. So I got a note-book and used it. Every
time I sit for writing I first jot down the date, so that the event you enquire
about appears under the date 1st December. Your second query is : Was
Mrs. Jobson at the stance or had she met Mrs. Watson during the day ?
She was at the seance, but she had not met Mrs. Watson during the day. I
may explain that when Mrs. Watson entered the stance room Mrs. J. was
already there, but at the other end of the room, so that there was about six
yards between them, and the room was full of people. I may say also that
it is quite a usual thing for Mrs. Watson to hear names called at stances.
On the night in question she had not sat long when she exclaimed : " Who's
Cathie — I hear someone calling Cathie." Soon after that Mrs. Chiswell and
Mrs. Watson saw the spirit described in Light appear. . . . As to my
automatic writing, I do not use a planchette, I take a pencil in my hand,
mentally say an invocation, wait a minute or two, then some force not my
own .guides my hand along. . . . But, as I have said before, I got a
reporter's note-book to keep them in, and the messages in the story you are
interested in are mixed in among others of a more or less private nature ; so
that you will see the difficulty in that direction. But if you are particularly
interested about seeing them, I will be in London (if nothing conies in the
way to prevent) at Easter. If you care to make an appointment to meet me,
I will be pleased to show you the book.

316 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [Nov., 1898.

Mr. Jobson was in London at Easter, 1898, and kindly brought
up his note-book, and showed Mr. Bennett the original entries above
referred to, obviously, as he says, made at the time.

The following is the letter from Mrs. Connell informing her friends,
the Jobsoris, of the death of her daughter. It is not dated, but was
received on the morning of December 14th, 1896.

139, Denmark Hill, S.E.

MY DEAR FRIENDS, — I know how you will sympathise with us when I tell
you that our darling little Cathie passed away over a month ago. Jim is
away in Scotland, and I have been very ill ever since or would have written
before. Our darling was only ill a day or two of diphtheria. She had been
getting on so well lately. Since I had given her the maltine tablets, she had
seemed so well and went to school. My dear friends, I cannot tell you half
how I miss her charming, sweet little ways. She was the very emblem of
love and sympathy. Her whole thoughts were what she could do [to] make
us all happy. She seemed to love everything and everybody. She saw
beauty everywhere ; and I never knew a child so young to have so many
friends. I have had at least 30 letters of condolence from people who loved
her ; and it is only the knowledge that my darling may return to us that
keeps my heart from breaking. Poor Jim came home too late to see her
alive. I will write again soon. — Yours ever,

K. CONNELL.

The two following communications are from Mrs. Chiswell and Mrs.
Watson mentioned above : —

9, Sugnall-street, Liverpool, February 22nd, 1897.

On Monday evening December 14th, 1896, I attended the weekly
meeting of the members of the Liverpool Society of Spiritualists, held in the
committee room at Daulby Hall, 14, Daulby-street. During the evening, I
saw clairvoyantly, and described to Mr. John Jobson, the spirit form of a
lady, clad in a flowing white robe, who passed in front of Mr. Jobson,
turned, and stood immediately behind him, resting her hand on his shoulder.
The palm of the hand being uppermost.

F. A. CHISWELL.

This is to certify that on Monday, 14th December, 1896, I attended a
seance held by the members of the Liverpool Society of Spiritualists at
Daulby Hall, Daulby-street, Liverpool. When I had been there some time,
I distinctly heard the word "Cathie " pronounced several times. Some little
time afterwards I saw the spirit of a beautiful young woman come and place
a wreath of ivy leaves on Mr. Jobson's shoulder, then disappear in the same
direction she came when she entered the room.

I have read the above and find it quite correct.

KATE WATSON.

125, Field-street, Liverpool [February, 1897.]

No. CLIV.— VOL. VIII. DECEMBER, 1898.

JOURNAL

OF THE

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

CONTENTS.

New Members and Associates

PAGE

317

Meetin1* of the Council

318

General Meeting

318

Obituary: The Eev. Alfred Gurney, M.A

325

326

Supplementary Library Catalogue

331

NEW MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES.

Names of Members are printed in Black Type.
Names of Associates are printed in SMALL CAPITALS.

COLQUHOUN, DANIEL, M.D., (Lond.), M.R.C.P. (Lond.), High-street,
Dunedin, New Zealand.

GROVE, MRS. EDWARD, 22, Dover-st., Piccadilly, London, W.

HAMILTON, J. J., 70, Cecile Park, Crouch Hill, London, N.

Heard, George Henry, 5, Elmsleigh-ter., Salisbury-rd., Plymouth.

HOCKEN, THOMAS M., M.R.C.S. (Eng.), F.L.S., Moray-place, Dunedin,
New Zealand.

JONES, REV. T. LLOYD, B.A., B.D., Ffynonfair, Pencader, Carmarthen.

Marshall, Dr. Thomas, 95, Fortess-road, London, N.W.

MIDDLEMORE, MRS., Melsetter, Orkney, N.B.

MILBURN, REV. R. G., M.A., Trinity College Mission, Tenby-road,
Stratford, E.

RICH, Miss, 50, Queen's-gate-terrace, London, S W.

RYVES, Miss MIRIAM G. B., Rough Close, Stone, Staffordshire.

SMITH, D. R. CRAWFURTH, 11, Horbury-crescent, NottingHill Gate, W.

THOMSON, W. B., 22, Wallwood-roacl, Leytonstone, Essex.

WESTERN, REV. WILLIAM' T., M.A.. Bartlow Rectory, Linton, Cam-
bridgeshire.

THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

GRIFFITH, MRS. MARY E., Cleveland, Ohio.

HERRICK, WILBUR F., Haworth, N.J.

HOLBROOK, FRANCIS W., Haworth, N.J.

Kinraide, T. B., 38, Spring Park-avenue, Jamaica Plain, Mass.

318 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1898.
MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.

A meeting of the Council was held at the Society's Rooms, 19,
Buckingham Street, on November 4th. Mr. H. Arthur Smith was
voted to the chair. There were also present, Dr. A. W. Barrett,
Mr. F. W. H. Myers, Mr. F. Podmore, Mr. Sydney C. Scott, and Dr.
A. Wallace.

The minutes of last meeting were read and signed as correct.

Two new Members and twelve new Associates were elected, and
the election of one new Member and three new Associates of the
American Branch was recorded. Names and addresses are given above.

The Council recorded with regret the decease of Mrs. Minto
Elliot, who had been an Associate of the Society for many years.

Two presents to the Library were reported, for which a vote of
thanks was accorded to the donors.

It was agreed that General Meetings be held — subsequently to those
already arranged for December 9th, and January 27th — on Friday,
March 10th, at 8.30 p.m., and on Friday, April 28th, at 4 p.m.

Other matters of business having been attended to, the Council
agreed that its next meeting should be at the Westminster Town
Hall, on Friday, December 9th, at 3 p.m., previous to the General
Meeting on that day.

GENERAL MEETING.

The 95th General Meeting of the Society was held at the West-
minster Town Hall on Friday, November 4th, at 8.30 p.m.; DR.
A. W. BARRETT in the chair.

MR. F. PODMORE read his paper entitled : " A Predecessor of
Mrs. Piper." The paper is embodied in Mr. Podmore's article in
Proceedings Part XXXIV., under the title of "Discussion of the
Trance-Phenomena of Mrs. Piper."

MR. F. W. H. MYERS then gave a "Discussion of some Reciprocal
and other cases recently received." He began by calling attention,
a propos of Mr. Podmore's paper, to a case of Mrs. Piper's type (G.
256) printed in the Journal for July, 1898, and coming from a very
good witness. In that case Mr. Wilkie (now Chief of the Secret Ser-
vice Department of the U.S. Government), when slowly awaking
from a doze, in the presence of a friend, Dr. de Wolf, imagined
himself to be writing on a pad of paper a message for Dr. de Wolf
from " Katy McGuire," a person of whom he knew nothing at all ;
but whose message, when he awoke and repeated it to Dr. de Wolf,

DBC., i8»8.] General Meeting. 319

was recognised by that gentleman as coming from an old acquaintance,
and as containing facts never communicated to Mr. Wilkie.

The case, thus seen at once to be essentially parallel to Mrs.
Piper's, becomes closer still when we look at its details. There is the
arrival of the message from a person not near or intimate, but who
may probably enough have thought more of Dr. de Wolf than he did
of her. There is the motor impulse ready to flow with equal ease
into writing or speech. And especially there is the utilisation of the
moment of waking, the " peculiar mental condition " which in Mrs.
Piper marks the exit not from ordinary sleep, but from trance, in
which she is increasingly wont to utter some of her most significant
words. There is, perhaps, no moment in which the sensitive seems to
be so nearly in both worlds at once as she does in this.

Finally, there is the same possibility with which we are familiar in
many of Mrs. Piper's messages, namely, that the message may have
been derived from the mind of the living person present. Except the
date of Katy McGuire's death,— whose correctness we can hardly now
trace, — the facts given were known to Dr. de Wolf.

Mr. Myers then read the two following cases, (one of them
reciprocal) both of which the Society owes to the kindness of Mr.
Andrew Lang, who is acquainted with the families concerned.

L. llOt). Reciprocal.

(COPY.)

Narrative of Mary B., cook, attested by Isabella C., housemaid, and Jane

£)., parlourmaid.
Taken down by J. L. B. from M. B.'s narration.

(1.) " On Friday night, December llth, 1896, about llp.m., we were all
sitting by the fire in the kitchen. We heard steps in the passage, coining
from the hall and going along by the nursery door. Jane looked up and
asked if I heard anything. I said, 'Yes, I thought I heard Mrs. Blaikie
walking along with her skirts rustling, from 'the front door along by the
nursery.' We had all heard it. I said I thought it was like a warning, and
I said, ' I hope Mrs. Blaikie isn't dead.' Then we rose and went to the door
leading from the kitchen to the nursery passage, but saw nothing. Miss
Frances heard our steps, and came out and asked what on earth was the
matter. Miss Frances said she had heard it too, and thought it was one of
us. Then we went upstairs to Miss Jeanie's room. She had heard it and
said she hoped there were no burglars about. We went all over the house and
looked everywhere but there was nothing to be seen. We then went to bed
and have never heard it again. We all thought Mrs. Blaikie must be dead."

(Signed) MARY B.

ISABELLA C.
December 11th, 1897. JANE D.

320 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1898.

(2.) On Friday night, December llth, 1896, about 11 o'clock, I was
writing, alone, in my bedroom — the first room at the top of the staircase,
which is a low one. The house was quite quiet, and I fancied the servants
had gone to bed, so that I was surprised to hear footsteps coming along the
passage downstairs. I heard the steps come from the hall, past the foot of
the staircase, and along the passage known as " the Nursery Lobby." There
they died away, and I heard no more. It was rather a heavy, quick,
decided step, accompanied by the rustle of a silk dress, and was so exactly
like my mother's that if I had not known her to be in Edinburgh, ill, at the
time, I should not have had two doubts about it. I wondered which of the
servants it could possibly be, thought I should ask in the morning, and went
on writing. In a few minutes there was a knock at rny door, and I opened
it to find three scared and white-faced maids. They asked me if I had been
downstairs, and looked more scared when I said no. They then asked if I
had heard steps, and when I said "Yes, they sounded exactly like Mrs.
Blaikie's," they told me they had heard them as they sat in the kitchen, had
gone to look in the hall and passage, and had seen no one. They then went
to the "Nursery," the room to which the passage where the steps were heard
led, and asked my sister, whose bedroom it was, if she had left her room. She
said No, but had heard the steps. It was very evident they thought they
had heard a ghost, and as my mother was rather seriously ill at the time, of
course they concluded it was hers. We did not discuss this, however, and I
suggested burglars, took my poker, and went with them in a procession all
round the house. We looked in every room and closet, in every wardrobe,
in the bath, and under every bed, and found nothing. The only other
person in the house at the time, besides my sister, three maids, and myself,
waa my elder brother, who slept in a room upstairs not far from mine. I
went to his room, and found him fast asleep. On being roused up he said
he had not heard anything at all. In the letter I was writing at the time I
mentioned that I had broken off to have a burglar hunt, and my
correspondent kept it, so that we have in writing the date and hour.

(Signed) JEANIE LANG BLAIKIE.
Holydean, December 17th, 1897.

(3.) About 11 o'clock on Friday night, December llth, 1896, while
undressing in my room I heard footsteps coming along the lobby towards the
door. They were heavy and rather quick ; exactly like my mother's, but
not resembling those of any of the servants. I thought it must, however,
be one of the maids, and paid no attention to them until the three servants
came in a great state of panic to ask if it had been me. It did not strike me
as being anything supernatural.

(Signed) F. M.

(4.) On Thursday (December 10th 1896), while visiting my niece, Miss
L., 19, M. Terrace, Edinburgh, I was seized with an acute attack of
laryngitis. The evening of the next day (Friday, December llth), about 11
o'clock I had such a sensation of being suffocated that I felt as if I were

DEC., 1898.] General Meeting. 321

dying, and would never see my home again. I was suddenly filled with an
overpowering longing to be at home, and whether I fell asleep for a few
moments and dreamed I do not know, but it seemed the next minute as if
my desire was granted, and I felt I was actually there. I was conscious of
walking along the passage past the dressing-room door, and towards the
room we call the nursery, but I had hardly time to realise my own joy and
relief when I found myself still lying in bed, and the feeling of suffocation
from which I had had such a happy respite for a few moments, again
tormenting me. When I returned home a week later I was told by Jane D.
of the curious occurrence at Holydean on the evening of Friday, the llth.

(Signed) H. B.
L. 1107. Ae P"

On an evening in February, 1891, I was seated in the smoking-room of
the New Club, Edinburgh, about 11 p.m. I fell asleep, and slept soundly
for an hour. During the time I was asleep I had the following very vivid
clream.

I dreamt that I was running home as fast as I could to the house in
Abercromby-place, in which we then lived, fearing I was late for dinner. I
opened the door with my latch key, and hurried upstairs to dress ; about
half way up, I looked down and saw my father standing in the hall, looking
up at me. At this point I awoke, and, finding that it was a few minutes
past twelve, p.m., I rose immediately from my chair and went home.
On my arrival I was astonished to find that the house was lighted up,
and my father and one of my brothers searching the rooms, and calling
for me.

My father, on seeing me, expressed much surprise, and asked whence I
had come. I explained that I had only just returned from the club. He
then asked me if I had not come in about twelve o'clock, and on my replying
in the negative, told me the following facts.

He had, as was his custom, been sitting in his smoking-room, and about
twelve rose from his chair, intending to go to bed. On opening the door,
which led into the hall, he heard the front door shut, and distinctly saw me
hurriedly cross the hall and run upstairs, and, looking up, saw me glance
down at him and disappear. He went to his room and remarked to my
mother that he had locked the front door, as I had come in. My mother
said she thought he must be mistaken, for, had I returned, I would not have
passed her room without wishing her good night. My father confidently
affirmed that he had seen me enter the house, but, as my mother was still
unconvinced, he went to my room, and, finding it unoccupied, he called my
brother and began to search for me. While they were thus engaged I
actually returned. My father was so certain that he had seen me that it was
some time before I could convince him that I had only just returned, and I
shall never forget our mutual mystification at this strange occurrence.

ARTHUR HAMILTON BOYD.

St. Boswells, N. B. [December 18th, 1897.]

322 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1898.

I remember the occurrence which my son, the Rev. Arthur Hamilton
Boyd, Clerk in Holy Orders, Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, has narrated above,
and can testify to the accuracy of the statement. It was frequently
afterwards alluded to by my husband, the late Sir John Boyd.

Maxpoffle, St. Boswells, March 28th, 1898.

On the former of these two cases Mr. Myers made some remarks,
mainly to the following purport : —

This case of Mrs. Blaikie's combines two of the most interesting
characteristics which these narratives can possess. It is reciprocal,
and it is also collective. That is to say, in the first place, it involves a
perception at both ends of the chain, — on the part of the person who
causes the phenomenon as well as on the part of those who perceive it.
Such cases have much value, as letting us to some extent into the
mechanism of the transference, as it appears to the persons concerned.
They cannot, indeed, know what is really happening ; since the
process goes on, in my view, in an environment to which their supra
liminal selves have no clear access. Yet we may guess something
from the sensations which find their way upwards, at such crises, into
ordinary consciousness.

Again, the case is what we call collective, inasmuch as the per-
cipience was shared by several persons ; as though some common cause
had affected all of them. In some sense this must be so in any
genuine collective case ; the event at a distance must needs produce
directly or indirectly all the phantasms which represent it. But it
may produce these effects directly in one percipient only, and indirectly
in the rest, — they receiving the impression telepathically from the
primary percipient. This view was defended both in Phantasms of the
Living and in the " Report on the Census of Hallucinations " (Pro-
ceedings, Vol. X.), and, if accepted, it does certainly avoid a serious
difficulty. It avoids, or at least postpones, the question of the relation
of a disembodied spirit to space ; with which is associated the question
of the relation of a disembodied spirit, — I do not say to an " etherial
organism " — but to any localisable centre of force.

Yet, as our evidence accumulates, this postponed question forces
itself more and more into notice, through several lines of suggestion.
I have here to consider one line of suggestion alone, — which follows
naturally from the case just quoted.

What, in the case of any psychical transfer, is the agent's own
subjective impression of what has occurred ? I do not say that his
impression is exactly evidential, — it may be of a quite dream-like or
much-refracted type, — but if any one type seems to prevail among

DEC., 1808.] General Meeting. 323

many percipients, that very fact should have some instruction for us.
The ayenCs impressions, as we know, are less often accessible for us
than the percipient's. It many cases the agent:s death follows close
on the apparition ; at other times no trace of the subliminal com-
munication rises into his waking mind. Yet " agents " have by this
time given us a good many accounts, both of their clairvoyant
experiences, unshared by any percipient, and of their sensations in
reciprocal cases, — that is, at the moment when they were, in fact,
causing a phantasm which one or more percipients observed. It is
with this latter group of narratives that we are at present con-
cerned.

Mrs. Blaikie tells us what she felt or imagined, at a moment when
five persons, in three separate rooms, heard what they took to be her
step in a passage. Let us consider what feeling on her part would
have suited each of the theories above mentioned. If, for instance,
her feeling had simply been one of close spiritual contact with one of
her daughters, that would have fitted in with the notion that this
daughter was the primary percipient ; that this daughter's mind had
probably translated some vague telepathic impression into the familiar
sound of her mother's footstep ; while the other percipients, — though
in different rooms of the house, — had caught that hallucination
from her.

In fact, however, Mrs. Blaikie's own experience was not at all like
this. She did not think of her daughter, nor did she feel in special
closeness to any spirit. She felt two things, — a deliverance from
bodily distress, and a presence in a particular locality. These feelings
do not, I think, suit the strictly telepathic explanation so well as they
suit my alternative suggestion of a " phantasmogenetic centre "
(Phantasms of the Living), the modification by the agent of an actual
point in space, whence certain unknown influences (not air-waves nor
light-rays) are diffused, which are by us recognisable only through
their influence upon certain sensitive organisations. Let us try to
realise this complicated notion rather more closely. In the first place,
I should accept the sense of momentary freedom from bodily obstruc-
tion as in itself an important fact, indicating that there was a scission
of personality, and that a portion of the personality not closely linked
with the organism became, for the time being, prepotent in conscious-
ness. This fits in well with the view to which I have been of late
years gradually led, that we may often get nearer the truth by thinking
of scissions of personality as operative in these psychical incidents than
by keeping strictly to our old notion of telepathic messages despatched
from one to another mind.

324 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 18!)8.

If, however, we speak of a scission of personality in such a case as
Mrs. Blaikie's, how can we define that fragment or element of her
personality which manifested itself only by the sound of footsteps in
a passage ; by the very phenomena which the unbodied personality
could not be expected to produce ? This must have been a symbolic
manifestation ; how are we to reconcile symbolical appearances with
anything like an actual presence ? If this spiritual element of Mrs.
Blaikie showed itself as footsteps, as what might it or might it not
have shown itself? This question has often already been discussed in
a different form, — when we have speculated whether the details of
the form assumed by a phantasm were fashioned by the mind of the
agent or of the percipient. I regard such details as generally coming
from the agent, although not in most cases consciously chosen. They
express, I think, a path of least resistance ; an organised habit of
subconsciously conceiving one's personality or Wesen in a particular
wav. Thus, although we may pay little attention to the sound of our
own steps, it would surprise us much if that habitual sound were to
change suddenly ; and one's idea of one's own footfall is in a sense
more intimate than any intellectual preoccupation. Somewhat
similarly I have observed that slight interruptions of lifelong habit, to
which one hardly gave a waking thought, are more likely to recur in
dreams than events of more rational interest. I suggest, then, that
the possible range of self-manifestation for one of these fractions of
personality is limited to a certain set of familiar symbols, which work
themselves out in quasi-automatic fashion ; like Mrs. Blaikie's quick
decided footfall in the passage of her house. But in what way do they
work themselves out ? If there really is this translocation of a frag-
ment of personality, how is it manifested to several percipients, if it
be neither a direct influence of one mind 011 another, nor an actual
disturbance of the natural order of things ? What is the suggested
compromise between the mental and the molecular ?

What I suggest is, in my view, not so much a compromise as a
dimly apprehended reconciliation. I suggest that a modification of
space was effected by Mrs. Blaikie, but a modification of space which
did not modify matter, and probably did not modify ether, at least in
any way which established science can parallel. There is no a priori
improbability in such a conjecture; rather it would be absurd to
suppose that we already know all the ways in which space can be
modified. I suggest, then, that a translocation of a part of Mrs.
Blaikie's personality did actually change a special part of space in its
relation to human intelligence. The change was not expressible in
terms of matter and motion ; it was not necessarily perceptible to

DEC., 1808] Obituary. 325

human ears, nor to a phonograph ; but it was perceptible by certain
incarnate intelligences not wholly bounded by acoustic or optical limi-
tations. The metetherial change translated itself into quasi-acoustic
phenomena, just as material changes may translate themselves into
" real " sounds or etherial changes into light. From that particular
point of space a stimulus was transmitted which would affect certain
human organisms (not necessarily all healthy human organisms) in a
special supersensory way.

The conception of a phantasmogenetic centre, then, involves some-
thing which transcends the special forms of the senses, but which does
not transcend or nullify space. Surely this is reasonable enough.
The special senses have been slowly elaborated by our pre-human
ancestry on this planet. They cannot survive bodily dissolution in
anything like their present forms. Space, on the other hand, what-
ever its ultimate significance may be, is a much wider conception,
affecting, at any rate, the whole etherial and material universe,
with all its unknown grades of conscious life. If there be in us men
a perceptive power beyond the ordinary senses, there seems no reason
why that power should lose hold at once of this vast generalisation.
A spirits powers may not be limited or determined by space, as
our bodily powers are limited. But a spirit need not, therefore, lose
the sense of space ; any more than a man born blind, and acquiring
sight, loses in his widened faculty the old power of feeling his way, on
which he once wholly depended.

I have here used the word " spirit " with reference to a certain
fraction or element in a still incarnate personality. It is obvious that
the same line of argument would continue to apply even if that special
element in the personality, or something like it, were alone surviving.
If Mrs. Blaikie had died suddenly at the moment of the noise in the
passage, that noise might, for all we know, have continued just the
same ; although we should then have to define the phantasmogenetic
centre as due, not to the translocation of an element of an embodied
personality, but to the haunting of a ghost.

OBITUARY.

THE REV. ALFRED GURNEY, M.A.

Our readers will learn with regret the death of the Rev. Alfred
Gurney, who died on November 28th, at the age of 55. He was a
brother of Edmund Gurney, — the value of whose work, in the earlier
years of our Society, is known to all our readers, — and had himself

326 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1898.

been a Member of the Society from its foundation. We extract the
following account of him and his literary work from the Athenceum of
December 3rd : —

A writer of religious verse of more than common merit, the Rev. Alfred
Gurney, died last Monday at Roehampton. He was a son of the Rev.
Hampden Gurney, a well-known hymn-writer, and a nephew of Mr. Russell
Gurney, Recorder of London. Mr. Gurney's publications included The
f'ixion- of the Eucharist, and other Poems, Day Dreams, and A Christinas
Far/got, a little book of particularly beautiful and serious verse. He wrote
also a study of Wagner's Parsifal, and though a High Churchman, he gave a
lecture, and afterwards published it, entitled "Our Catholic Inheritance in
the Larger Hope," which even broad Churchmen might have charged with
universalism.

CASES.

G. 259.

The following account of the apparition of a suicide has been re-
ceived from the percipient. Mrs. O'Donnell had been living for some
months in Brighton previous to March, 1898, but never saw the local
papers, and had not seen any account of the suicide. In conversation
(with Mr. R.W. Buttemer, who saw her on the part of the S.P.R.) she
stated that she had never seen anything of the kind, nor had any
waking hallucination before. The fact of her engaging the rooms
seems in itself enough to show that she had no knowledge of what had
recently occurred in them.

On March 22nd last, 1898, I went into furnished rooms in one of the
roads at Hove, Brighton. They were large and well-furnished, and seemed
comfortable. We were promised good attendance, and I congratulated my-
self on feeling I should be able to stay there some time. As the evening
wore on, a strange sense of cold and gloom seemed to pervade the place, and
an unaccountable feeling of desolation came over me. I ordered a good fire
in my bedroom and retired early, saying I feared I had got a chill. I hoped a
good night's rest would make me all right again. I was scarcely in bed an hour
when I was awoke by heavy footsteps overhead, and so loud did they become
I almost fancied they were in my room — in fact I felt as if it was full of
people. The noise continued all night, only ceasing with bright daylight.
When the maid came into my room at 8 a.m., I said, " Those are very noisy
people up-stairs." She looked astonished, and said, " No one is up-stairs ;.
all the house there is vacant." The landlady also assured me of the same
thing. Yet I was certain I heard the walking about. All the next day I
felt ill and strangely depressed ; so that, although I never believed in such a
thing before, I felt the house must be haunted. That night the same noises
continued, but, it possible, louder. It was impossible to sleep, and on trying,
to get up in the morning, I felt too ill and could not. The third night I had

DEC., 1898.] Gases. 327

a large fire made up, and had a night-light for company. About 11 p.m.
my daughter went to her own room, wishing me a better night. Again the
feeling of footsteps overhead — so much so that a perfect thrill of terror ran
through me. I kept looking towards the fire for about an hour, and then
thought I should turn towards the wall, where, terrible to relate, a horrible
figure was standing by my bedside, one arm pointing to the adjoining room
(then vacant), and the other pointing to me, quite close to my face. I gasped
for breath, and covered my face with the clothes. After some time I re-
assured myself it was all imagination, and again turned to where I saw the
horrid apparition. There it still was. I shrieked for terror, and called out,
"Oh, my God, what, is it ? " and put out my left hand as if to feel if it was
real, but imagine my horror, I was grasped by the icy hand of death. I re-
member no more. My daughter came to my room at an early hour, but I
could not speak for a long time. On hearing the terrible story she said it
was dreadful, and that I should not sleep in that room again, and that she
would change with me. The figure I saw was that of a rather small man,
very dark, with very small hands, and covered in a tattered black suit from
head to foot, more like a scarecrow than anything human. I slept in my
daughter's room the next night, or rather occupied it, for I could not sleep.
Towards the middle of the night the door opened (I had locked it). A
small, dark, gentlemanly young man walked in, saying, "Oh, so you have
the Scotchman's room ! " — smiled pleasantly, and walked out of the room
as he had come in. It was all so strange and dreadful. I told some friends
next day. They were greatly startled, and said, "Can this be the house
where a suicide happened a few weeks ago ] " I at once called up the land-
lady. She denied it, saying it was next door. I was determined to find out,
and on sending to the various tradespeople with whom we dealt, found it
was the very house. The landlady then admitted it. The poor young man
had slept in my bedroom, and the adjoining room (to which he had pointed)
was his sitting-room, from the window of which he threw himself out. He
was killed on the spot. The landlady's son waited on us at table. On
investigating the matter with him and his mother afterwards, I found his
description of the poor young fellow corresponded with the apparition I saw.
He was four-and-twenty, rather small, and very dark. He had had bad
bronchitis, and became depressed. On the morning of his death he got up
rather early, saying he felt better, and when his family left him he imme-
diately opened his window, and threw himself out. He fell from a second-
floor window into the area. His clothes were torn to pieces as he fell. On
inquiry as to the Scotchman's room, the landlady told me a young Scotch
gentleman (now in the service) had occupied our drawing-room and that bed-
room which I changed to — and that he was a great friend of the poor young
fellow who had ended his life in such a dreadful manner. The landlady
also admitted she would not go up stairs after dark alone, so she also
must have considered the house haunted. I can certify all I have stated is
strictly true.

MARY O'DONNELL.
September 5th, 1896.

328 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1898.

On the n'rst occasion the phantom had its face averted, was very
dark, including the hands and head, and was apparently in tattered
garments. On the second, in the Scotchman's room, it entered in neat
clothes, apparently in the act of putting on its sleeve-links, while its
face and appearance corresponded with the description Mrs. O'Donnell
afterwards had from those who knew the man.

The daughter neither heard any noises nor saw anything, either
when in her original (Scotchman's) room or in Mrs. O'Donnell's
bedroom.

The accompanying report is from the Sussex Daily News, of
February 8th, 1898.

SAD SUICIDE AT HOVE. . '

Mr. G. E. Hillman, Coroner for East Sussex, held an inquest yesterday
at No. 58, York Road, Hove, touching the death of Walter Overton
Luckman.

Arthur Overton Luckman, living at 58, York Road, Hove, said deceased
was his brother, and was twenty-four years of age. He was formerly a
clerk in the employ of Messrs. Robins and Sons, of Waterloo-street. He
had suffered from asthma all his life, but on Friday week he had a very
severe attack, which confined him to bed. He had also been a little
delirious. His mother had been sleeping in the same room. On Saturday
morning she left the room to go to her own apartment, and directly she
reached her room she heard his brother lock the door. She called witness,
who at once forced the door open, and saw his brother climbing on to the
window-sill. He disappeared just before witness reached him. He was
only dressed in his nightshirt at the time. Witness went downstairs, and,
with the help of the servant, carried deceased indoors. He had never
attempted to take his life before, and had not threatened to do so. When
picked up he was breathing slightly, but died almost immediately after.

Mr. Richard Hughes, L.R. C.P. , practising at Silwood Road, Brighton,
deposed to having known deceased for about fifteen years. Deceased had
been subject to attacks of asthma, from which he used to suffer very
severely. Witness had not seen him for two years or more. The brother
came for witness on Saturday morning last, and told him what had
happened. On going to the house he found the young man was dead. The
cause of death he attributed to shock. Deceased had evidently fallen on
his left side, as the left arm was broken, the head being quite uninjured,
save for a blow on the nose, which might have been caused by striking
against something in the fall. Witness was sure that the act was committed
in a sudden attack of delirium.

The jury returned a verdict of "Suicide while of unsound mind."

L. 1108. Ad P"

The following incident is related by the Marchioness of Dufferin
and Ava in My Canadian Journal, written while Lord Dufferin was

DKC., 18»8.] Cases. 329

Governor-General of Canada. (Pp. 82-3 and 88). The Governor-
General's party had left Ottawa on June 10th, 1873, and were touring
about at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. On the 30th they were at
Mingan. Lord and Lady Dufferin, and a small party, had started off
early, up the river, salmon fishing. After describing the morning's
work, Lady Dufferin says : —

We were just going to begin fishing again, when an Indian canoe arrived
bringing us very sad news. One of our footmen had gone out fishing, and
was drowned. We returned immediately. We saw the place where the
accident happened ; on the rocks lay a piece of bread he had been eating.
He had got up and stood at the edge of the water with his rod. The steward
said, " Can you swim ?" "No." " Then take care, for it is slippery and the
water is very deep." "Never fear," he said, and instantly slipped. He
put up his hands to take off a mosquito-veil he had on, and disappeared.
The steward dived after him, but he never rose at all. A boat was got, and
presently the men saw the thick end of a fishing-rod sticking up. They
took hold of it, and lifted the poor dead body up with it. He appeared to
be upright in the water, the rod fast in his hand.

Under date of July llth, — when near Gaspe, — Lady Dufferiu
writes : —

You remember that I told you that a poor manservant of ours, was
drowned at the Mingan. As we knew nothing about his people, we were
unable to communicate the news of his death to them, so D. [Lord Dufferin]
ordered any letters that might arrive for him to be brought to himself. The
first of these — which we have just received — was from a servant girl he was
attached to at Ottawa, and was dated exactly seven days after the date of the
accident. In it she said : "I have been in my new place a week, and I like
it very much, but I had such a dreadful dream on the day of my arrival. I
dreamt that you and Nowell were upset in a boat together, and that Nowell
was saved, but you were drowned." As the spot where the accident occurred
is in an uninhabited region on the coast of Labrador, more than 500 miles
distant from Ottawa, without either telegraphs or posts, it was impossible she
sliould have had news of her lover's death when this letter was written.

Nowell, spoken of in the letter, was not the steward, but Lord
Dufferin's valet. It is not recorded where Nowell was at the time of
the accident.

L. 1109. A". Pa

The first of the two following statements was written last August,
by Master John P. Challacombe, when he was at home at 42, Rich-
mond Road, Montpelier, Bristol, and refers to an incident which
happened when he was at school at Okehamptori, Devon.

330 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1898.

On Sunday night, March 20th, 1898, I had gone to bed as usual (about
9.30 or 10). I could not sleep and began thinking of home and especially of
mother. My bed was so placed that I could see the staircase, and, after a
bit, to iny surprise, I heard someone coming up the stairs. It flashed into
my mind that it was mother, and so it proved to be. She was dressed in a
black dress that I had never seen before, and had on her pink shawl and
gold chain, and as she came into the room her shoes creaked ; in fact, they
did so all the time. I did not feel at all frightened but tried to get out of
bed to go to her, but something held me back. She went to the bed before
mine, where my chum sleeps, and bent over him and looked al him. Then
she came to me and kissed me ; I tried to kiss her but could not. Then she
disappeared and seemed to vanish in a mist ; the face was the last thing I
saw. I am quite sure that I was awake, and saw every object in the room
when she was there.

(Signed) J. P. CHALLACOMBE.

Awjunt, 1898.

The next statement is from Mrs. Challacombe, the lad's mother.

42, Richmond Road, Montpelier, Bristol.
This is Jack's statement.

Now the queer part is that, at the time, I was visiting a cousin in Wales,
and Jack knew nothing about it. The evening he speaks of I had returned
home, and had removed all my walking things with the exception of my
boots, dress and watch-chain. My dress Jack had never seen, and I am not
in the habit of wearing my chain outside my dress. As for the boots they
were a pair I had not worn for years, because they were in the habit of
creaking.

I went to the door to wait for my cousin, who was a long time saying
"good night" to a friend, and while there I was thinking deeply of Jack as
I had not received his morning letter. We made an agreement when he
went to boarding school that we would think of one another every night and
also say " good night."

(Signed) ANNIE E. CHALLACOMBE.
f, 1898.

In reply to further enquiries, Master Challacombe writes thus : —

August 27th, 1898.

I had never had any psychical experience before, and mother has never
experienced anything of the kind either. As to the door of the bedroom
being open, I do not know anything about that. It is situated at the bottom
of the stairs, so practically there is no door to the bedroom. Most probably
it was shut, but I did not hear it open. As to the date,. I remember it was
a Sunday evening. I wrote home to mother the following Saturday, and
she thought it was a strange coincidence, as she was away, and the date was
March 20th. When I was home at Easter she questioned me about it.

J. P. CHALLACOMBE.

., 1898.] Supplementary Library Cataolgue. 331

SUPPLEMENTARY LIBRARY CATALOGUE.

Additions since the last list (JOURNAL for January, 1898).
THE EDMUND GURNEY LIBRARY.

BRAMWELL (J. Milne, M.B.), On the Evolution of the Hypnotic

Theory (Brain, 1896.) London, 1896*

Hypnotic Anaesthesia (The Practitioner, 1896) London, 1896*

Suggestion : Its Place in Medicine and Scientific Research

London, 1897*

Jas. Braid : His Work and Writings (S.P.R., Proceedings,

Vol. XII.) London, 1896*

CHARCOT, (J. M.), The Faith Cure (The New Review, 1893)... London, 1893
COLQUHOUN (J. C.). History of Magic, Witchcraft, and Animal

Magnetism. 2 Vols London, 1851

ETHNOLOGY (14th Annual Report of Bureau of). Parts I. and II.

Part II. The Ghost Dance Religion Washington, U.8.A., 1896

JAMES (Prof. William), Human Immortality. Two Supposed Objec-
tions to the Doctrine London, 1898

MYERS (F. W. H.), On Some Fresh Facts Indicating Man's Survival

of Death. (The National Renew, October, 1898) London. 1898

NEILSON (William), Mesmerism in its Relation to Health and Disease

London, 1855
NEVIUS (John L., D.D.) Demon Possession and Allied Themes

London, 1896t
SCHOFIELD (Alfred T., M.D., F.R.C.S.), The Unconscious Mind

London, 1898
STATHAM (F. Reginald), Magnetism and Morals (The Westminster

Review, November, 1898) London 1898

Wetterstrand (Dr. O. G.), Hypnotism and its Application to Practical

Medicine. Translated by Dr. H. S. Petersen London, 1897

AUGUEZ (Paul), Spiritualisme ; Faits Curie ux Paris, 1858

CHARCOT (Prof. J. M.), La Fui qui Gue>it Paris, 1897

CHARDEL (C.), Essai de Psychologic Physiologique. 2nd Edition... Paris, 1838

[DALLOZ], Entretiens sur le Magne"tisme Animal Paris, 1823

DEMARQUAY (Dr. et Dr. Giraud-Teulon), Recherches sur L'Hypno-

tisme Paris, 1860

[DE PUYS^GUR (A. M. J. Chastenet)], Memoires pour servir a

1'Histoire du Magrie"tisme Animal. 2nd Edition Paris, 1809

Suite des Mernoires Paris, 1809

[DESLON (Ch.)]. Satire. Supplement aux deux Rapports de la Faculte

de MeMecine Amsterdam, 1784

[DIDIER (Alexis).] Le Sommeil Magnetique, explique" par le Somnam-

bule Alexis Paris, 1856

FABRE (Dr.), Le Magne"tisme Animal Ports, 1838

FRAPART (Dr.) Lettres sur le Magnetisme Paris, 1840

GASC-DESFOSSE'S (Ed.), Magnetisme Vital Paris, 1897

* Presented by the Author. t Presented by Mr. F. W. H. Myers.

332 Journal of Society for Psychical Research. [DEC., 1898.

H[ANNAPIEU] (C. H.), Teratoscopie du Fluide Vital P«m. 1822

JANET (Dr. Pierre), NeVroses et Idees Fixes /'(///\, 1898*

"JOURNAL DU MAGN&HSME ANIMAL" Parin, 1840-1

ME.SMER, Aphorisiues Pan.*, 1785

RAYMOND (Prof. F. et Dr. P. Janet), NeVroses et Ide"es Fixes II.

Pam, 1898*
S^RK (Dr. G. Louis de),- Application du Somnambulisme Magne"tique

I'' iris, 1855

MULLER (Rudolph), Hypnotismus und Objective Seelenforschung

L- •//'-./?/, [1897]*

THE GENERAL LIBRARY.

B. L. L., The Doctrine of Energy London, 1898*

BEAUMONT (John), Gleanings of Antiquities London, 1724

B[LAVATSKV] (H. P.), In Memory of. By Some of her Pupils

London, 1891
BURNETT (C. M., M.D.), The Philosophy of Spirits in Relation to

Matter L<>n<l,m, 1850

BUSHNAN (J. S., M.D.), Miss Martineau ami her Master L<»,.l,,n, 1851

D'Esi-Ki: VN.-K (E.), Shadow Land L<>n<l<>n, N.D.

EDDY (Mary Baker G.), Science and Health. With Key to the

Scriptures /;..*/„/,,* U.S.A., 1898

(Ji.iMi-sK iA), b.-liind the Veil New York, 1897*

|<; I:\ST (Mrs.)], Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of

1 uid (2 Vols. in one) London, 1811

. (Dr. C. Theodore), On Some Psychological Aspects of the

Abn..rmal Loii'ln,,, 1897*

Sudden Death and Premature Burial Lni,,l,,n, 1-

HOUT..N < \\ . T. and W. B. Yeats), A Book of Images London, 1898*

LANC (Andrew), The Making of Religion London, 1898

LETTKI:^ i K"M JULIA. Edited by W. T. Stead L<m<l»n, 1898

•• LI«.HT." Hound Volume for 1897 L<nt'lun, 18!)7_^

PEEBLES (Dr. J. M.), Three Journeys Ruund the World Bodon, I8'.',s

AKSAKOW (A.), Un Gas de De"materi;ili.satioii (From thu <!fnn<tn.)

/'.»r/x, 1896*
VIAL (L. C. E.), L' Amour dans L'Univers Paris, \

FKI::I>KI< us (Ernst), Indiscretionen aus der Vierten Dimension

Leipzig, 1898*
l'i« K (Dr. Leopold), Die vieile Dimension Lc'qr.ij, 1898*

FALCOMER (Prof. M. T.), Pro o Contro lo Spiritismo ? N.U.*

VK-MK (Cesjire Baudi di), Storia dello Spiritism •>. ~2 \'i.!s...7'i/i -in, 189b'-7

SILVA (Dr. Eduardo), Curas Maravilhosas *S. Pnt<l,>, r,,-«:il, 1897*

LAVATERUS (Ludovicus), De Spectris Lwjdnni, 1659

* Presented by the Author. t Presented by Prof. W. R. Newbold.
§ Presented by the London Spiritualist Alliance.

1011
364
v.8

Society for Psychical Research,
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